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CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 



CONQUESTS 
OF INVENTION 

CYRUS H. Mccormick .-. elias howe .-. thomas 

A. EDISON .-. WILLIAM MURDOCK .-. ROBERT 

FULTON .-. GUGLIELMO MARCONI .-. CHARLES 

GOODYEAR .r. GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 

ELI WHITNEY .». GEORGE STEPHENSON 

JAMES WATT .-. WILBUR AND 

ORVILLE WRIGHT .-. ALEXANDER 

GRAHAM BELL 



BX'r 

MARY RrPARKMAN; 

Author of "Fighters Ar Peace," "Heroes of 
To-day," "Heroines of Service," etc. 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1921 



-f 3 



Copyright, 1921, by 
The Cextuby Co. 



SEP 22 1921 



Printed in U, S. A. 






^/•■ 



g)ClA622898 



PREFACE 

This volume is an attempt to present in a 
clear readable form the story of some epoch- 
making inventions. Its only claim to ^^a place 
in the snn" rests on the care which has been 
taken to consult and sift all available material, 
and to select that which is likely to prove inter- 
esting and significant to the general reader. 

The author wishes to acknowledge gratefully 
valuable assistance given by employees of the 
Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Con- 
gress; also by Mr. J. 0. Martin of the Bell 
Telephone Company, and Miss Louise T. Lati- 
mer and Miss Ethel Bubb of the Public Library 
of the District of Columbia. Especial thanks 
are due to Miss Cornelia Whitney, teacher of 
history in the "Washington Normal School, for 
help in the preparation and revision of manu- 
script and index, and for many vitally helpful 
suggestions. 

Washington, D. C. 
July, 1921. - 

V 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Conquests of Invention . ...... 3 

The Conquest of the 

Keaper Cyrus Hill McCor- 

mick .... 8 

King Cotton 29 

The Story of the Spin- 
ning-Jenny .... James Ear greaves 38 

The Barber Who Became 

a Knight .... Richard Arkwright 49 

The Poet of Many In- 
ventions .... Edmund Cartwright 54 

The Yankee Who Crowned 

King Cotton . . . Eli Whitney . . 63 

By-Products 80 

Inventions in the Hoime . ...... 85 

The Inventor of the Sew- 

ing-Machine . . . Elias Howe . . 87 

The Day of Kubber 107 

A Knight-Errant of In- 
vention Charles Goodyear . 110 

Light-Bringers 135 

A Finder of Buried 

Treasure .... William Murdoch . 139 
The Franklin of Our 

Times Thomas Alva Edison 159 

vii 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Transportation and Progress . . . . .ISO 
The Conquest of Steam . Jaw.es Watt . . 191 

Pioneers of Invention 217 

The Man Who Gave 

America the Steamboat lioheri Fulton . . 222 
Stephenson and the Loco- 
motive George Htephenson 242 

The Inventor of the Air- 
Brake George Westing- 
house .... 275 

The Steel Age 293 

The Story of Bessemer 

Steel WUliam Kelly . . 298 

Machines fol* the Millions Henry Ford . .310 
The Conquest of the Air Samuel Pierpont 

Langley . . . 325 

Wilbur Wright . 330 

Orville Wright . 330 

Old Signals and New 347 

The Father of the Tele- 
graph Samuel F. B. Morse 350 

The Story of the Tele- 
phone Alexander Graham, 

Bell .... 379 
Wireless . . . . . Guglielmo Marconi 396 



VllI 



TJRT OF TTJ>rTRTR,ATTOKR 



iHB 



Crusoe's Harrow xii 

First Plow 5 

Team Work 5 

A Pioneer's Harvesting 9 

The Cradle 15 

McCormick's Reaper 22 

A Primitive Loom *>1 

I'Jonanza Farming in the Nort}iw<^st .... *A2 

Kay's Fly-8huttle U 

Hargreaves' Spinning-Jenny 47 

.Sir Richard Arkwriglit 52 

lV)wer Loom flO 

CV)tton Gin 77 

Flias Howe 88 

Howe's Bewing-Maehine 97 

(Jharles Goodyear 112 

Murdock's Model of Locomotive 147 

Murdock's Ga»s Generator 153 

Mr. Edison at his desk using the tehiscribe . . 160 
James Watt striving to improve Neweomen's en- 
gine ... 200 

Robert Fulton 224 

ix 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The *' Clermont ' ^ and its mighty descendant, tlie 

''Lusitania'^ 241 

An Early Eailway Coach 262 

Stephenson's ^^Eocket" 269 

Locomotive John Bull and Train, 1831. Built by 

George Stephenson and Son, for America . . 273 

Westinghouse ''Frog'' . 283 

The Air-Brake 287 

George Westinghouse 288 

Eastern Clay Furnace with Goat-skin Bellows 

used in production of the famous Damascus 

Blades 294 

A Roman Blast Furnace on a hill-top to catch 

the breeze 301 

Raising the lump in early days in America . . 303 

The Bessemer Process 305 

The Open-Hearth Process , . 305 

First American Automobile, Duryea's Model . 320 

Orville Wright 337 

Wilbur Wright 337 

A Signal Tower 348 

Samuel F. B. Morse 352 

The Morse Telegraph 365 

Morse's Original Telegraph Instrument now in 

the National Museum in Washington, D. C. . 369 
The Crowd Listening to President Harding's 

Address 384 

Laying the Underground Cable to Washington . 394 



BEGINNINGS OF DISCOVEEY AND 
INVENTION 

WE have all followed with breathless in- 
terest the adventures of Robinson Cru- 
soe on his island. We watched him as he met 
the difficulties and problems of life alone with 
none to help him build a house or to sell him 
food or clothing. We saw how he learned to be 
his own carpenter, farmer, butcher, baker, and 
candlestick-maker. 

But suppose Eobinson had not had the help of 
the things saved from the wrecked ship. And 
suppose he had never seen a plow, a boat, an 
umbrella, or any of the many other things he 
managed to make. He brought with him from 
the wreck guns and gnnpowder, hammers, saws, 
nails, and other tools. He brought, too, the 
knowledge of how these things might be used 
to good purpose. Can you imagine the story if 
Eobinson Crusoe had been without this help? 

xi 



DISCOVERY AND INVENTION 

That is the story of man on the unexplored 
island of the world. He had to learn to make 
his own weapons and tools. He discovered that 
a stone was better than his fist with which to 




deal a blow, and that a piece of rock that gave 
a place for his hold was better than a round 
stone. Since such rocks were rare, a stout piece 
of a tree or an animal's antler might be fastened 
to the stone. So r- an fashioned the first ham- 

xii 



DISCOVERY AND INVENTION 

mer. Centuries passed before lie discovered 
metals and learned how to melt them to his uses 
in a fire. 

Most fascinating of all the chapters of man's 
progress is that one which tells about the be- 
ginnings of discovery and invention. When a 
start had been made it was inevitable that he 
should go on step by step. The vast forest is not 
more wonderful than the sprouting acorn. The 
marvel of creation is shut up in a tiny seed. 

So it is in the winning of the first crude tools 
and weapons that we find the real romance of 
invention. "When man conceived the idea of 
making for himself a harder fist, a longer arm, 
and a sharper tooth, than those of his ov/n body, 
he had learned the great lesson. The whole 
world was his. He had but to knock and a door 
to new gains and possibilities flew open to his 
touch. The story of man's progress tells of 
the way that the spirit to dare and do saw in 
each obstacle not a wall to stop the onward 
march, but a door to which he must find the key. 

And what of the finding of the key? Was it 
ever won through accident or luck ! Was it luck 
that saw in the thorn that held together two 

xiii 



DISCOVERY AND INVENTION 

pieces of deerskin the way to make a nail and 
a needle f Was it mere accident that made man 
see in the sapling that flew back as he bent it the 
promise of the spring-trap to capture his food 
and the bow to speed his arrows? 

Many apples had fallen to the earth before 
Newton saw his apple. It took a Watt to bridge 
the space between the steaming kettle and the 
steam-engine. 

' ' God gives the bird its food, but he does not 
throw it into the nest." Nature holds all the 
keys to the house of life, but man must find them 
and fit them to each need. 



XIV 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 



^^ CONQUESTS OF INVENTION'' 

*Wliether they delve in the buried coal, or plow the up- 
land soil, 
Or man the seas, or measure the suns, hail to the men 

who toil! 
It was stress and strain in wood and cave, while the primal 

ages ran, 
That broadened the brow, and built the brain, and made of 

a brute a man . . . 
Toil is the world's salvation though stern may be its 

ways; 
Far from the lair it has led us — far from the gloom of the 

cave — 
Till lo, we are lords of Nature, instead of her crouching 

slave ! 
And slowly it brings us nearer to the ultimate soul of 

things ; 
We are weighing the atoms, and wedding the seas, and 

cleaving the air with wings . , . 
And luring the subtle electric flame to set us free from 

the clod — 
Oh, toiling Brothers, the earth around, we are working 

together with God! 
With God, the infinite Toiler, who dwells with His 

humblest ones, 
And tints the dawn and the lily and flies with the flying 

suns. 

Edna Dean Proctor. 



CONQUESTS OF 
INVENTION 



THE story of the development of civilization 
is one with the story of man's conquests 
through invention. It is only in the power of 
mind that man is first among the creatures of 
earth. Puny in strength compared with the 
beasts of the jungle, he has reinforced his arm 
with weapons sharper than the tiger's tooth and 
surer than the lion's spring. His sight is weak 
compared with that of the hawk or the eagle, 
but he has made for himself magic glasses to 
bring the stars near and to reveal the marvels 
of the world invisible to the naked eye. Less 
fleet of foot than the dog or the deer, he has har- 
nessed steam and electricity to carry him over 
land and sea and to send his thought and spoken 
word across the world with the speed of light- 
ning. 

3 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

Everywhere he has conquered through mind, 
— through applying reason and ingenuity to the 
problems that nature presents. The world chal- 
lenged his powers at every turn, and as he met 
the challenge fairly and squarely, he rose step 
by step in the scale of existence, winning 
through struggle a fuller and freer life. 

First, living by hunting and fishing, he was 
the prey of famine when game was scarce or 
when rival tribes invaded his hunting-grounds. 
This hard life of uncertainty and warfare was 
greatly improved when the hunter learned to 
tame animals and to live by the milk, the meat, 
the wool, and the skins, of his flocks and herds. 
The change brought about by the domestication 
of sheep and cattle marks a distinct advance in 
civilization. It was not, however, until with 
agriculture a supply of food was assured which 
made a wandering life in search of fresh fields 
unnecessary, that permanent homes were built, 
and a new step in civilization reached. With 
this new stage came the desire for beautiful 
possessions, and the handicrafts were devel- 
oped. Men became masters of the arts of weav- 
ing, of painting, and of wood-carving, and in 

4 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

working" out their fancies in leather and in 
metals. 

Then, as cities grew, the demand for quicker 




Team Work 

and cheaper ways of making things led to im- 
provement after improvement in labor-saving 
tools and devices, until finally a new age — the 
age of machinery — ^had dawned when **iron 

5 



CO:t^QUESTS OF Il^VE]srTIO:N" 

men'' did in a moment the tasks that had form- 
erly required weary days. The scythe yielded 
place to the harvester that cut, bound and 
threshed the grain. As the sharpened stick of 
the first farmer had been succeeded by the steel 
plow, so this in turn gave way to the steam plow 
and the tractor which made possible the cultiva- 
tion of thousands of acres with less expenditure 
of man-power than had been required by a hun- 
dred acres under more primitive methods. The 
spinning-wheel and hand-loom were replaced by 
cotton and woolen mills; the hand-made gar- 
ments fashioned by the mother of the family 
were replaced by machine-made clothes from 
great factories. Cities were lighted by gas and 
electricity. Eapid transportation could now 
bring the fruits of the tropics to those who 
''never felt the blazing sun that brought them 
forth''; and all peoples into closer relation one 
with another. The paper that we read at our 
breakfast-table gives us news of all the world. 
These are some of the conquests of invention. 
But let us remember that conquests do not al- 
ways lead to a golden age of prosperity and 
peace. Let us not dream that the greatness of 

6 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

our country can be measured by the size of our 
cities or the power of our big machines. Unless 
these things help to make people better and 
happier, unless they give fuller life and liberty, 
they have not really added to our civilization. 
For the chief wealth of a nation is to be found 
in the content of its people ; and civilization de- 
pends upon the understanding, the industry, 
and the generous spirit with which all work 
together shoulder to shoulder. Let us not put 
our faith in the bigness of our machines but in 
the strength and courage of the men who labor. 
And, since *'men are square,'' our faith will 
not be in vain if they are given an equal chance 
and a square deal. The triumphs of invention 
and the increase of wealth will then mean not 
new difficulties and dangers but a true conquest. 



THE CONQUEST OF THE EEAPEE 
Cykus Hall McCormick (1809-1884) 

IT is strange that after all the years that 
have passed over the world since men be- 
gan to plant wheat they still gather in the har- 
vests slowly and painfully by hand, — much as 
they did in Bible times," said a hard-working 
Virginia farmer one day. He was speaking 
aloud a thought that had come to him more than 
once, and for Kobert McCormick to think meant 
to act. He could think even when he was swing- 
ing a heavy cradle under a July sun, when most 
harvesters were conscious of nothing but aching 
backs and addled brains. And, in a log workshop 
that stood next the farmhouse, he worked 
away on every rainy day as industriously as 
ever he made hay when the sun shone. Here 
there was a forge, an anvil, and a carpenter's 
bench, and here he put together much of the 
furniture that made the home comfortable, as 

8 



CYEUS HALL McCORMICK 

well as tools and machines for making the farm 
work easier. 

**It will perhaps be a farmer who invents 



A Pioneer's Harvesting 

some better way of getting in the wheat than 
by sickle or cradle/' he said to himself over 
and over. **And what if it should happen that 
Eobert McCormick is that farmer!'' So he 

9 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

set himself to the task of making something to 
lighten the labor of the next harvest time. 

''What is that fnnny tiling for!" asked his 
little son Cyras, who stood in the door of the 
workshop one day looking with wide eyes at 
the queer big machine his father was making. 
''What are you putting all those sickles on 
sticks f or r' 

"It 's to cut wheat, my boy," said the father, 
"if I can only make it work. When our horses 
pull it along it should cut as much grain as 
several men without getting a crick in its back, 
or having to stop to mop its brow and drink 

cider. ' ' 

The boy liked to see the lively twinkle that 
came in his father's eyes when he was happy 
over an idea. It must indeed be jolly to know 
how to make what you wanted, and nothing 
could be better fun than to discover new ways 
of doing things. He, too, would learn the cun- 
ning of tools. So, on the days when his father 
worked over his reaper, Cyrus stayed near by, 
watching and keeping up a rap-a-tap of his 
own with hammer and nails. 

There were, it seemed, many difficulties in 
10 



CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 

the way of getting a maclime-reaper to do its 
work as it should. The whirling rods whose 
task it was to whip the wheat up against the 
line of waiting sickles found the wiry, bending 
grain unexpectedly obstinate. It got so twisted 
and tangled and bunched that the machine was 
choked and the sickles helpless. If only the 
wheat could be depended on to grow straight 
and even till the great moment of the harvest ! 
If it were never wet or bent to earth by storms ! 
If the ground itself were free from unpleasant 
bumps and hollows! 

^ * You '11 find that there is nothing yet to take 
the place of honest toil, Friend McCormick,'' 
said the neighboring farmers, winking at each 
other slyly with a solemn relish. 

*'I don't look to see the day when work will 
be out of date," replied Robert McCormick, 
quietly. ^^But I do hope that the day is not 
far off when we shall be able to do more 
things, — to get more that is worth while by the 
sweat of the brow!" He did not give up try- 
ing to make a machine that would reap his 
grain, but he worked and experimented within 
his workshop where no one but those of his own 

11 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 
family knew of his attempts and his failures 
Of all the children, the boy Cyrns watched 
with particular sympathy and interest. He 
tnew that his father was a wise man. Even 
the clever lawyers and the most learned min- 
ister of that part of Virginia came a long way 
to talk with him and ask his advice. Besides 
he understood all the marvels of tools, and 
could fashion things deftly with his hands as 
well as picture them with words. 

That farm between the Blue Eidge and the 
Alleghanies was at once a home and an inde- 
pendent community. The wool of their own 
slieep was spun into yarn and woven into cloth 
for their winter clothes and blankets. Shoes 
were cobbled there, too, and stockings, caps 
and mufflers were knitted in odd moments' 
There were days when soap was boiled, candles 
molded, meat cured, and the various kindly 
fruits of the earth dried and preserved To 
have been a child in that home was in itself a 
practical education. Cyrus's mother may 
never have heard that the ideal training for 
a child IS that where head, heart, and hand have 

12 



CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 

chance for free and natural exercise, but she 
acted as if she had. 

Mrs. McCormick believed in hard work, but 
she was never too busy with her own affairs 
to do a good turn for a friend. Happening 
along one day when some neighbors were rush- 
ing about trying to save some hay from a storm, 
she tied up her horse, seized a rake, and fell 
upon the task with all her might. ^*If we don't 
make haste the rain will beat us, ' ' she said. 

Though a woman who was always ready to 
turn her hand to the work of the moment, she 
knew, too, how to enjoy life. She loved to walk 
among her flowers, to see her pet peacocks 
strut about the lawn, and to ride behind a pair 
of spirited horses. There were no dull days to 
one of her ambition and power of enjoyment; 
each hour was full of rich possibilities. 

Not Robert McCormick, but Cyrus, the son 
of this wise, progressive father and energetic, 
ambitious mother, was destined to give the 
world the first successful harvesting machine. 

^'How the past lives in each one of us in all 
that we do!'' said Cyrus McCormick thought- 
fully, years after his reaper had brought 

13 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

wealth to his family and prosperity to many. 
^^As I owed to my father my turn for invent- 
ing, so I owed to my mother the ambition and 
determination to turn my work to good account 
by making my invention a business success.'* 
There was, too, something of the stanch, 
never-say-die courage of his long hne of Scotch- 
Irish forefathers in the strength of purpose 
with which he forged ahead despite all diffi- 
culties. 

But if we must look to his past to explain 
the power of a man, we must find in his present 
the circumstances that make his opportu- 
nity. The thousands of hardy pioneers who 
had marched westward taking up the limitless, 
fertile lands that the Louisina purchase 
brought to the newly formed nation, found their 
farming with wooden plows, sickles, and 
scythes a life-destroying round of drudgery for 
a bare subsistence. Is it any wonder that many 
of them dropped sowing and harvesting to push 
still farther westward for adventure and for 
gold? Is it any wonder that the hard struggle 
for a poor living in a rich, unworked country 
sharpened the wits of the workers and led them 

14 



CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



to seek out ways of saving labor? The indus- 
trial revolution to win freedom from the 
tyranny of toil followed the political revolu- 
tion. Machines for spinning and weaving came 

c 




The Cradle 

into being. The steel plow took the place of 
the hoe, the cradle succeeded the sickle, and 
still the fields of grain cried out for a new way 
of gathering in the harvest. 
Robert McCormick was not the first farmer 
15 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

to rebel against the hot toil of the swinging 
scythe or cradle. Many had tried to devise 
ways of making some sort of reaper. Cyras 
McCormick, who made the machine that stood 
the test and won success, was the forty-seventh 
inventor of a harvester. 

^'I began to work on my reaper when I was 
a boy sitting on a slab bench in the ^Old Field 
School/ looking at the daylight through the 
window that was just a gap where an upper 
log had been cut away/^ he said. ^'I had borne 
the heat and burden of the long summer days 
in the wheat fields and I knew what work meant. 
As I sat in my father's workshop watching 
him struggle with his reaper I whittled a 
smaller cradle that would not be so back-break- 
ing to swing as the one that had fallen to my 
lot, and my thoughts flew faster than the flying 
chips. The reaper must win out.'' 

The ^'Old Field School" got its name be- 
cause it was built on one of those stretches of 
land, starved and overworked by the wasteful 
farming of single crops that took all and gave 
nothing to the soil. The very spot where he 
was sent to peg away at spelling and arithmetic 

16 



GYEUS HALL McCOEMICK 

was an object-lesson. Farmers certainly went 
about things in stupid ways or there would n 't 
be old fields. Nature didn't work after that 
fashion. How the old earth renewed her 
strength year after year! 

Cyrus McCormick decided to study survey- 
ing, showing his inventive turn here by cleverly 
fashioning the quadrant that he was to use. 
*^I shall be ready to mark out the new fields 
that your reaper will conquer one of these 
days/' he said to his father. 

But after fifteen years of effort Eobert Mc- 
Cormick gave up the struggle. The reaper 
promised well, and it did cut the grain, — 
but only to toss it about in a tangled mass. 

* ^ Not much gained after all the planning and 
contriving!" said the father ruefully. 

'^It is good, and I shall make it my business 
to prove it," vowed Cyrus. 

He believed in the reaper as he believed in 
his father and for the sake of both he mightily 
resolved to carry on the work to the day of 
success. So he began where his father left off. 
The reaper must be something more than a 
powerful mowing-machine. It must meet the 

17 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

practical problem of dealing with the grain as 
it stood in the field, divide it systematically 
for the cutting and handle it properly when 
cut. 

Look now at the model of the first machine 
that harvested real wheat in a real field. Ee- 
member that forty-six other inventors had 
struggled without success for the same end. All 
of them had failed to deliver the grain in a way 
to make their inventions a practical saving of 
time and labor. Cyrus McCormick's reaper had 
at the end of its knife a curved arm or divider to 
separate the grain about to be cut from the 
rest. There was also a row of fingers at the 
edge of the blade to hold it firmly in the posi- 
tion to be cut. Then that same knife had not 
only the forward push as the horses drew the 
machine over the field, but it also gave a side 
sweep so that none of the grain could escape 
as it fell on a platform from which it was 
raked by a man who followed the harvest. 

The practical economy of this practical 
farmer's reaper was shown first in the way the 
shafts were placed on the off-side so that it 
could be pulled, not pushed, the horses walk- 

18 



CYRUS HALL McCOEMICK 

ing over the stubble while the cutter ran its 
broad swath through the bordering grain ; and 
second, in the way the big driving wheel that 
turned the reaping-blade also carried the 
weight of the machine. Compared with the 
complete harvesters that we know to-day, this 
was indeed an uncouth, clattering, loose-jointed 
contrivance, — ^but it worked. Drawn by two 
horses, it cut six acres of oats in one afternoon, 
the work of six laborers with scythes. It was 
as if Hercules had appeared to add to his great 
labors a still greater work. 

Nowhere was help needed as it was in the 
harvest fields, for grain must be cut when it is 
ripe. All that cannot be reaped in a few days 
is spoiled. A farmer might plant his wheat, 
the fields might laugh with the golden plenty, 
but if there were not laborers enough at the 
right moment there could be no bread. 

The short reaping-season also made a special 
dif&culty for the inventor. So short a time 
there was for putting his machine to the test, — 
so long a time to wait before fresh fields of 
waving grain made another trial possible ! 

There were, as we have seen, difficulties 
19 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

enougli in the way of making a machine to cut 
grain; bnt there was a harder task than that 
of cutting wet wheat in a bumpy, hillocky field. 
There was the obstinate prejudice of ignorant 
men who feared anything that spelled change. 

Look at Cyrus McCormick when he brought 
his machine for a public exhibition near Lex- 
ington, in 1832. There were as many as a hun- 
dred interested or curious spectators, — ^law- 
yers and politicians eager to see a new thing, 
farmers with excited, doubting faces, and sullen 
laborers who feared that this monster might 
steal their daily bread. 

Young McCormick 's strong, serious face was 
pale but determined. He did not wince even 
when his reaper side-stepped at a particularly 
ugly hump in the hilly field. 

^^Here, here, young man!" cried the owner 
of the field. ^ ' That 's enough now ! Stop your 
horses I Can't you see that you are ruining my 
wheat!" 

The red-faced farm-hands were no longer 
tongue-tied. *^Any one might know it was all 
humbug!" rumbled one. 

^*We '11 keep to the good old cradle yet, — 
20 



CYRUS HALL MoCOEMICK 

eh, boys?" jeered anotlier. A group of picca- 
ninnies, teeth agleam with mirth, chuckled and 
turned handsprings of delight. 

Cyrns McCormick looked abont at men and 
boys, calloused and bent by toil that yielded 
them less than a nickel an hour through long 
days of twelve and fourteen hours. ^*We are 
all slaves to the things we know and are used 
to," he said to himself. **I shall have to go 
slow, but I '11 be sure." Farmers and laborers, 
no more than the jovial negro boys, dreamed 
that the thing they feared and ridiculed would 
prove the great bread-giver that was destined 
to set them all free. 

At just the moment, however, when Cyrus 
McCormick was resigning himself to defeat a 
champion rode to the rescue. 

'*You shall have the chance you are after," 
said a man who had been watching McCormick 
and his machine narrowly. ^^Just pull down 
that fence over there and see what you can do 
in my field." 

Here was new hope and fairly level ground. 
The inventor drove gratefully to the test and 
laid low six acres of wheat before sundown. 

21 . 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

He had made good. The conquering reaper was 

driven in trinmpli into Lexington, where it was 

put on exhibition in front of the court-house. 

''That machine is worth a hundred thousand 




McCormick's Eeaper 

dollars!" declared a learned professor of a 
finishing school for young ladies with solemn 
emphasis. But young McCormick knew it would 
prove nothing more than a fortnight's wonder 
unless he could first make machines and then 

22 



CYEUS HALL McCOEMICK 

make farmers buy them. The inventor would 
have to turn manufacturer and promoter. And 
if Cyrus McCormiek had not been an inspired 
man of business as well as an inventor the 
reaper would probably have been as the forty- 
six other attempts at harvesting-machines. 

For several years he worked away, — farming 
to earn his bread and the chance to go on 
studying the way his reaper behaved under all 
conditions. A happy day came when a new 
sort of cutting-edge handled wet grain almost 
as well as the dry. The future looked really 
bright when, in 1842, after .ten years of toil 
without encouragement and without capital in 
his father's little log workshop, he succeeded 
in selling reapers to seven farmers who were 
interested to the extent of one hundred dollars 
each. 

The great day of the reaper really dawned, 
however, when it first saw the prairies. Here 
on the vast fertile plains of the Middle "West 
the harvest so far outstripped the power of the 
harvesters that the cattle were allowed to feed 
in the wheat-fields that the farmers were unable 
to cut. When Cyrus McCormiek saw the Illinois 

23 



CONQUESTS OF IN\^NTION 

prairies at harvest time, — saw men, women and 
little children toiling frantically to save as 
much of the wheat as possible during the short 
time of crop-gathering before the heads of 
grain were broken down and spoiled, — ^he knew 
that the time had come for him to leave his log 
workshop. 

**I must make my reapers, myself, to be sure 
that they are made right, ' ' he said, ^ ^ and I must 
pick out the right place for getting material 
and shipping the machines through the West." 

There were anxious hours spent in studying 
the map for the most favorable spot on the 
waterway of the Great Lakes. The hour of the 
inventor's destiny had indeed struck when he 
selected Chicago as the site of his future fac- 
tory. It certainly took faith and imagination 
to see in the rude little collection of unpainted 
cabins huddled together on a dismal swampy 
tract without sewers, paved streets, or rail- 
roads the place of opportunity for a big busi- 
ness. But as Cyrus McCormick had seen in 
vision his machine triumphantly gathering up 
for the use of man harvests that would vanquish 
the fear of famine, and give daily bread to 

24 



CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 

hungry thousands that should people the vast 
lands of the untouched West, he now saw a 
great city rise in the place of this dreary, strug- 
gling little frontier settlement. 

The story of the success of McCormick 
through the building up of his business was 
now one with the story of the prosperity of the 
prairie states and the growth of Chicago as a 
leading railway- and shipping-center, and mis- 
tress of the wheat markets of the world. Year 
by year as the country grew and the task of 
reaping harvests for ever-increasing hordes of 
hungry peoples from many lands who came 
seeking bread in the generous new states, the 
power of the reaper grew. Other inventors 
added to its strength. It was a proud day when 
the self-raking, self-binding machine passed 
over the great wheat-fields, one driver on the 
high seat triumphantly replacing a score of 
sweating farm-hands that the old method of 
farming had employed. 

To-day every child who has been to the coun- 
try thinks the brisk self-binders and the great 
community threshing-machines as natural a 
part of the farm world as the sheep and the 

25 



CONQUESTS OF IN\TENTION 

cows. He sees a huge tractor fed by oil or 
gasolene pull plows, harrows, harvesters, and 
threshers ; or sometimes a dauntless little Ford 
gaily leading now one and now another sort 
of planting or cultivating machine along the 
furrows. None of these things seems strange 
or particularly remarkable. To him the miracle 
will be seen in that first rude reaper put to- 
gether by Cyrus McCormick in the little log 
workshop among the Virginia hills. 



26 



KING COTTON 



East and west, and north and south, 
Under the crescent, or under the cross, 
One song j^ou hear in every mouth. 
Profit and loss, profit and loss. 

John Davidson. 



KING COTTON 

ONE of the most despotic rulers of modern 
affairs is King Cotton. To look at Mm 
in his flowering time he seems humble enough, — 
a near cousin to the simple hollyhock of our 
gardens and the pink mallow of marshy fields. 
But the way his blossom changes its color in 
the second day of blooming, from white or pale 
yellow to haughty red, shows his imperial 
spirit; and when his bolls .are full of their 
snowy harvest, the peculiar twist of their woolly 
fibers which makes them better for spinning 
than the fibers of any other plants, proves his 
power. 

Men are but pawns to be moved about at will 
in the royal game that King Cotton plays. Now 
his whim is for water-mills, and he calls the 
spinners out among the hills beside brisk, 
tumbling streams. Now he claps his hands and 
behold a new order of steam-engines summons 
the workers to toil in cities where coal is easily 

29 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

brought and where smoke blackens the sky! 
Will he not perhaps to-day prove his right to 
rule by building great central power-stations 
that will make it possible for his subjects to 
live under the blue heavens and breathe the air 
of fields and gardens once more ! 

The story of the way King Cotton gradually 
extended his sway in the world of men furnishes 
an interesting instance of the way one step in 
advance compels another. Nothing can exist of 
itself alone untouched by what is going on 
about it, for one life overlaps the lives of others 
and a pebble of change thrown into the sea of 
humanity starts ripples and echoes that grow 
in ever-widening circles. 

As people became acquainted with neighbor- 
ing peoples they began to know new wants. 
The homespun garments from their own sheep 
or the flax in their gardens no longer seemed 
enough for their needs. They looked longingly 
at the soft silks and gay calicoes from other 
places. So trade began. Industry was no 
longer content to remain within doors and meet 
the needs of one household. 

As the world widened through the discovery 
30 



KING COTTON 

and settlement of new lands, the possibilities 
of trade widened. The broad fields of the col- 
onies existed to furnish crops of opportunities 




A Primitive Loom 



for skilled workers and clever traders at home. 
^'We must make better cloth than the New 
England mothers can, so that they will want to 

31 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

buy from us," said the weavers of Old Eng- 
land. And tlie new market for their goods 
made them seek ways to save labor so that it 
might be possible tc turn out more, as well as 
better, cloth. 

Before the days of machinery there were 
three chief steps in the process of converting 
by hand the tangled cotton fiber, as it was sent 
from the fields, into cloth. First the threads 
had to be untangled or straightened. This was 
done by *^ carding,'' or combing the fibers with 
stout, stiff brushes called cards. Then the 
carded wool, where all the fibers lay parallel, 
was spun^ that is drawn out into loose yarn and 
twisted at the same time to make the fibers curl 
and cling together, thus forming a firm thread. 
The spinning-wheel was turned by the foot, and 
while the fiber was drawn out by hand it was 
at the same time twisted by a whirling spindle, 
called a ' ^ flyer. ' ' Now the thread was ready for 
the loom of the weaver, — a hand-loom, of 
course, where the warp threads were stretched 
vertically over a wooden frame, and the woof 
threads were woven across by means of a large 
wooden needle called a shuttle. Behold now the 

32 



KING COTTON 

finished cloth, which must be bleached and dyed 
the desired color, or, — if figures were required 
as in calico, — stamped with hand dies or 
stencils. 

In all this process the spinning stage was the 
slowest and the most tedious. A practical 
worker at a loom could weave the yarn fur- 
nished by six spinners. Then, when a certain 
clever weaver, one John Kay, managed in 1738 
to make this work lighter and quicker by in- 
venting the ^'fly-shuttle,'' the cry for more 
yarn made the need for some improvement in 
the methods of spinning even more urgent. 
The necessity led to the invention. Another 
skilled weaver, James Hargreaves, whose chief 
trial it was to secure a sufficient supply of spun 
yam or ''weft" for his loom, invented in 1764 
a machine by which one worker could spin eight 
threads at once. Soon improvements were made 
so that thirty threads could be drawn out at a 
time. "The more the merrier," sang the spin- 
ning-jenny. 

But it remained for another man, Richard 
Arkwright, to devise a scheme of revolving 
rollers to draw out strands firm enough to serve 

33 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

as warp threads. This in turn called for an 
invention that should bring together the good 
points of the two spinning-machines ; and Sam- 
uel Crompton made what he called humorously 
a ^^mule," because it was a cross between the 
spinning- jenny of Hargreaves and the ^^water- 
frame'' of Arkwright. It could spin a thread 
at once firm and fine, — fine enough to make pos- 
sible the manufacture of muslin cloth. 

The force of genius could no farther go; 
To make a third he joined the other two. 

Now the spinning, far from lagging behind, 
served as a spur to advance in other directions. 
A new device for carding was introduced, and 
in 1785, a loom operated by water-power or 
steam was invented. Cloth was woven with a 
speed and finish undreamed of a few years be- 
fore, and the cry was all for more cotton for 
the busy looms. 

Then came Eli Whitney, the man of the hour, 
whose cotton-gin could remove the seeds from 
a thousand pounds of cotton in a day, where 
before, working with hand-tools, a man could 
at best clean no more than ^ve pounds. A sup- 

34 



KIXG COTTON 

ply of raw material was now assured. The 
plantations of our Southern States were de- 
voted to the service of King Cotton, whose 
power seemed limitless and who scattered a 
golden largess among his followers. *^ Cotton 
is king ! Long live the king ! ' ' was the cry. 

But let us not forget that each conquest 
brings its trials and its problems. The spin- 
ning-jenny met a real need, saved much work, 
and made clothing cheaper and better. But it 
also introduced a new temptation and a serious 
problem. It was such a simple machine that 
even a child could manage it; and manufac- 
turers were not slow to seize the idea of larger 
gains through smaller wages. The problem 
of child labor in the cotton-mills came with 
the '^ conquest" of this invention, and all that 
this problem has entailed in wrong and suffer- 
ing. 

"For oil/' say the ehildren, "we are weary, 

And we cannot run or leap; 
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 
To drop down in them and sleep. 

"For all day, the wheels are droning, turning; 
Their wind comes in our faces, 

35 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

Till our hearts turn, our heads, with pulses burning, 

And the walls turn in their places : 
Turns the sky in the high window, blank and reeling, 

Turns the long light that drops adown the wall, 
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling; 

All are turning, all the day, and we with all. 
And all day the iron wheels are droning. 

And sometimes we could pray, 
'0 ye wheels,' (breaking out in a mad moaning), 

'Stop! be silent for to-day!'" 

So it was that King Cotton who had seemed 
to be "a merry old soul" showed that he did 
not always rnle wisely and well, and for the 
good of all his subjects. If some were growing 
rich and happy under his sway, many others 
were poor and miserable. 

But perhaps the worst thing that a wrong- 
headed monarch can do to helpless people is to 
lead them into war. It is certain that King 
Cotton must answer to this charge. For he 
offered such rich rewards through slave labor 
in the cotton-fields that the plantation-owners 
could only think of any change that threatened 
these gains as a danger to be fought to the last 
ditch. This led to the Civil War, — a terrible 
five years when brother fought against brother 

36 



KING COTTON 

to further the power and to extend the rule of 
King Cotton. 

The result of that conflict proved that cotton 
is 710 1 king. It was shown that man could rise 
to an intelligent control of the outer conditions 
of his life. Though at first it seemed as if the 
war and the freeing of the plantation slaves had 
destroyed the cotton industry, yet after thirteen 
years of peace the cotton-planters with wage- 
earning negroes had won once more the leader- 
ship in the cotton markets of the world. Now 
three fourths of the cotton that the world uses 
is grown in our Southern States. A free South 
has won through the raising of cotton, varied 
with crops of corn, rice, potatoes, and other 
food-stuffs, a prosperity far greater than that 
of the South which bowed down before cotton 
as king. 



37 



THE STOEY OF THE SPINNING-JENNY 

James Hakgkeaves (1-1778) 

WHAT a story that spinning-wheel in the 
comer could tell if we but knew the way 
to set it spinning the thread of the adventures 
that it saw and shared! It would tell of days 
of toil and busy evenings when all the life of 
the home was set to the tune of its unceasing 
whirr. It would tell of weary workers who 
spun and wove until backs were bent and eyes 
were dimmed. For, in the homespun days of 
old, the hours of labor were long and the time 
of rest scant for those who had the task of 
spinning cotton, wool, or linen fiber into thread 
and then weaving it into the stuff from which 
the clothes of the world were made. 

We think sometimes that spinning-songs 
were all happy, light-hearted tunes sung by 
some fair Priscilla or gentle Patience as she 

38 



JAMES HAEGEEAVES 

drew out the yarn for the cloth that was to 
provide her own household with soft linen and 
wool for winter wear. That is truly a pleasant 
picture, but we must turn from that glimpse 
of life in the more favored homes to another 
scene in a weaver's cottage, where all of the 
family were working together to make cloth. 
At one side Sister Sue and Betty were helping 
Mother spin yarn, while over in the comer 
Jack and small Jenny were busily ** combing" 
the tangled bunches of wool and cotton so that 
the threads all lay in one direction, making a 
soft, fluffy roll ready for the spinning. 

^^ Are n't you glad that Father made us this 
fine comber r' said Jack. ^'The heavy old 
brushes that all the other folks use would have 
been too much for you, Jenny. It 's lucky for 
us that Father is a carpenter as well as a 
weaver. I tell you, he can make things ! And 
he 's the fastest weaver anywhere about." 

James Hargreaves was indeed a master 
weaver. Put to work when a tiny lad, he had 
learned nothing from books but much from the 
school of life as he worked at his carpenter's 
bench or, through the long winter evenings, at 

39 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

his loom. And Necessity, that stern mother of 
invention, had led him to fashion more than 
one contrivance to save labor. The machine 
that carded or straightened out the threads of 
raw fiber for spinning was his latest triumph. 
How the children clapped their hands to see 
it do quickly and easily the work that would 
have taken them several hours of toil with the 
clumsy brushes. 

^'Pretty, pretty pet!" cooed little Jenny, 
drawing the ''slubbin" or ^*rove" of fleecy 
cotton from the carder and stroking it gently 
as she hugged it close in her arms. In fancy 
she held for a moment the doll of her dreams. 

The mother looked up from her turning wheel 
and smiled at her smallest helper. ^^Well done, 
precious poppet 1 ' ' she said. ' ' There is a beau- 
tiful rove ready for mother to spin. If only 
there were more of us to turn wheels now, so 
that your poor father would not have to go 
about buying yarn from the village spinsters 
for his weaving ! ' ' 

She sighed and set her wheel turning even 
faster as she thought of the busy loom that 
was always hungry. Work as they did early 

40 



JAMES HAEGEEAVES 

and late, they could not supply all the yarn 
needed by the flying shuttle. How dear were 
the bread and meat for hungry boys and girls, 
and how cheap was all their toil ! 

** Never mind. Mother dear," and small Jen- 
ny drew close to look up in the kind, troubled 
face. ^ ' Soon I shall be a big spinster, too, and 
I '11 spin so fast that you will never have to go 
out to get weft away from home." 

**My Jenny is a good child," said Mistress 
Hargreaves. ^^ What should we ever do without 
our busy helpers?" she added, nodding at the 
other children. ^^Who is there?" she called, 
hearing a hand fumbling at the latch. 

The door of the cottage opened slowly and 
in staggered a fignire bent from toil over the 
loom and weary now from the long walk in 
search of the heavy bundles of yarn which he 
carried strapped on his shoulders. 

**I did not look for you back so soon, James. 
Better luck this time?" called his wife cheerily. 
In her haste to help him put down his load of 
yarn the spinning-wheel was thrown over and 
Jenny laughed to see that the spindle which 

41 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

was standing straight up now had not ceased 
to turn and whirr merrily. 

*'Look, look!" she cried, clapping her little 
hands. 

^'Why, yes! Look, Mother!" said James 
Hargreaves, wonderingly. He knelt on the 
floor beside the child. ^^It may be," hs added 
to himself, ^'it may be that we can make a new 
spinner that shall do the trick of turning a 
number of spindles at once. ^'Do you see what 
your topsy-turvy wheel may teach us, Janie?" 
he said looking up at his wife. *'I think I see a 
way to make a machine to spin for me faster 
than ten spinsters. Then you and the children 
will not have to work all the time to keep my 
loom in yarn. Little Jenny can play a bit, as is 
her right." ^ 

''I want to help you, Father; Jenny's a big 
girl now," said the child, looking up at him 
through her tangle of curls. 

^^ Father will make him a Jenny that shall 
spin faster than even Mother can, — than she 
could if she turned six wheels!" exulted the 
weaver. In a flash of inspiration he had pio- 

42 



JALIES HAJ^GEEAVES 

tured a single wheel turning a row of whirling 
spindles. 

For some days the loom in James Har- 
greave's cottage was idle while the inventor 
fashioned the machine which he had planned in 
that moment when he had seemed to see the 
things of his world not only as they were but 
as they might be through the help of his won- 
derful idea. It was indeed a proud day when 
his dream became a working reality, and his 
new machine was spinning yarn to the tune of 
eight whirling spindles. First playfully, and 
then quite in the way of matter-of-fact habit, 
they called this latest helper ^^ Jenny.'' 

*^ After a while we can make our spinning- 
jenny do still more for us," declared the weaver 
hopefully. ''But we must take care to guard 
our secret and let no one guess about our magic 
yarn. You remember what they did to John 
Kay?" 

"John Kay? Who is he?" asked Mistress 
Hargreaves wonderingly. 

"Not remember about John Kay! And you 
a weaver's wife!" exclaimed James Har- 
greaves. "He was the man who made the fly- 

43 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

shuttle that saves us so much time and labor. 
Don't you mind how hard it was to throw the 
shuttle before we had the spring hammers and 
cords at each end of the loom to send it back 




Kay's Fly-Shuttle 

and forth? The making of cloth was indeed 
slow work then. It is easy to forget how hard 
things used to be when we complain about the 
way we find them now, ' ' he added thoughtfully. 
*'But what of John Kay? Surely he was 
rewarded for his workT' interrupted the wife. 

44 



JAMES HARGEEAVES 

**Say you so, my Janie!" returned the 
weaver darkly. *'Do you not know that people 
always fear a new thing! Any change seems 
a danger. The weavers were sure the fly-shut- 
tle would rob them of work and bread. And 
even the rich who should have known better 
said that this invention would fill the poor- 
houses with paupers for them to feed. Have 
you not heard of how the riots forced John 
Kay to shut up his mill at Leeds and how a mob 
broke into his house and destroyed everything 
in itr' 

^^And what of John Kay himself?" breathed 
the wife anxiously. 

^ ^ It is said that his friends managed to smug- 
gle him away in a wool sheet," replied Har- 
greaves, *^and that he is now living in exile in 
France, poor and friendless, while rich clothiers 
who have stolen his patents are growing richer 
and all weavers have reason to bless his name." 

In fact, in that very year, 1764, when Har- 
greaves was working out the first model of his 
spinner, John Kay, whose invention had 
brought wealth to many and given England a 
leading place in the markets of the world for 

45 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

the mannfacture of cotton and woolen goods, 
died poor and neglected in a foreign land. 

**But why can't people see that if you save 
them work they can do more? And that things 
will be so much cheaper that people can buy 
more I ' ' protested Mistress Hargreaves. ^ ^ They 
must see that your spinner which saves so 
much work is a good thing ! ' ' 

^'Most people cannot see past to-morrow's 
dinner,'' replied James Hargreaves. **If they 
think that is in danger, it is useless to try to 
show them that things may be better after a 
while. No, I shall keep my spinning- jenny, as 
I keep my Janie and my wee Jenny in my own 
home. We will work quietly together here and 
earn the right to rest and comfort in our old 
age." 

So the days passed. The weaver's loom was 
never idle now, nor was he ever seen away 
from home bargaining with the spinsters of the 
village for weft to satisfy his flying shuttle. 
Then it began to be whispered about that this 
independent weaver had something concealed 
in his cottage which gave him an advantage 

46 



JAMES HARGEEAVES 

over all his neighbors, and might even threaten 
to rob them of their bread. 

^'His little Jenny can turn its wheel and do 
more work in a day than a grown woman can 




Hargreaves ' Spinning- Jenny 

in a week," it was said. The rumor passed 
quickly from mouth to mouth ; the pale, heavy- 
eyed weavers were beside themselves with 
wrath and jealous fear. An angry mob broke 
into Hargreaves 's house and compelled him to 

47 



CONQUESTS OF im^NTION 

flee for his life. The first spinning- jenny was 
hacked to pieces and trampled underfoot. 

^'My poor spinning-jenny!" mourned the in- 
ventor, sadly. ^^She was a thrifty, good wench, 
true to her name! But we sha'n't give up nor 
shall she," he added hopefully. 

It was not in the nature of James Hargreaves 
to despair. Driven from his home near Black- 
burn, he went to Nottingham, where he found 
a partner and set up the first spinning-mill in 
England. He could not, however, spin the 
thread of a happier fate for himself. His pa- 
tents were stolen, and though at the time of 
his death there were twenty thousand '^jen- 
nies" in England, the Widow Hargreaves re- 
ceived only four hundred pounds for the in- 
ventor's share in the Nottingham factory. 

You cannot kill an idea, however. ^' Truth 
crushed to earth will rise again," and though 
many inventors seem to have been robbed of 
the fruits of their labor, the inventions which 
they gave to the world triumphed. The spirit 
of the worker lives then in his work, and the 
inventor conquers through the conquest of his 
invention. 

48 



THE BAEBEE WHO BECAME A KNIGHT 
EicHARD Arkwright (1732-1792) 

THE story of the barber Arkwright is a 
merry tale of a man who seemed from the 
first destined to succeed. He took np Har- 
greaves^s work but not his hard lot. For the 
Fates had spun for this clever lad a bright 
thread of golden success. 

The youngest of a family of thirteen chil- 
dren, Eichard Arkwright was early put to the 
trade of a barber. ^'I shall prove all my life 
that thirteen can be a lucky number; I '11 be 
the best barber in London,'' he vowed. 

He went at his work with a will. ' ' The fair- 
est shave in merry England for a penny," was 
his watchword in a day when men of the razor 
were charging twopence. Over the entrance to 
his basement shop he hung his sign bearing the 
challenge of his motto. 

But not for long was he content to live by 
49 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

cutting beards and giving shaves. ^^My real 
chance lies in the way of wigs/' said Master 
Dick. And in the day when all the rich and 
great coveted finer locks than nature had given 
them, he managed to furnish the fashionable 
wig-makers with the best hair and a magic dye 
that was in itself a fortune. 

See how one thing leads to another. In his 
travels about the country in search of fair 
locks and curling ringlets, this alert and enter- 
prising barber became interested in the new 
spinning- jenny and its work. 

*' There is just one trouble," he heard a 
weaver declare. ''The jenny's threads are not 
strong enough for the warp ; so the foundation 
of our cotton goods must be made of linen." 

"That seems a poor sort of contriving," said 
Arkwright. "Now I have never been one to 
content myself with half-way measures. Per- 
haps you weavers will have to call in a barber 
to finish you off, give you a good clean shave," 
he added with his merry laugh. 

But he set himself to the task seriously, so 
seriously, indeed, that his wife, who was some- 
thing of a shrew, declared, "You '11 starve your 

50 



RICHAED AEKWEIGHT 

poor family, scheming when you should be shav- 
ing!'' And she proved how mnch in earnest 
she was by breaking into bits the queer con- 
trivance he had managed to put together. But 
the spirit of the inventor was not so easily 
broken. 

**The time has come for me to work under 
another roof," he said with calm determination, 
*^for my attempt shall go on in spite of all the 
shrews in England!'' 

We are not told if this shrew was tamed. 
We only know that she failed to put a check 
on the inventive zeal of Richard Arkwright. 
He went on with his experiments, more resolved 
than ever to solve his puzzle. Engaging the 
help of a clever clock-maker, he developed a 
machine called the '^water-frame," which, 
driven by water-power, carried the carded cot- 
ton through pairs of turning rollers, each suc- 
ceeding pair revolving more rapidly than those 
before, until at last it drew out a yarn strong 
and firm enough to be used for the lengthwise 
or warp threads. English cotton cloth could 
now hold its own ; and to this day we find in the 
large cotton-mills both in England and America 

51 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

the clever barber's method of drawing out 
strong threads for the warp while the principle 
of the spinning-jenny is employed in the pro- 
duction of the weft or the woof threads. 

Now the one-time barber had a chance to 
prove himself not only an inventor but also an 
excellent business-man. He did not leave it 
to others to reap the benefits of his invention. 
Going to Nottingham, he became the ruling 
partner in a manufacturing firm which before 
long produced the first British calico, and a 
fortune for the enterprising Arkwright. 

^^Water-power wisely employed and a genu- 
ine business talent together made the barber's 
fortune," it was said. It was, however, some- 
thing more than these that went into the build- 
ing of this successful man's prosperity, some- 
thing that might be called four-square man- 
power. When he harnessed his will to a task it 
seemed as if he could move mountains. 

One thing that perhaps more than another 
indicates the measure of the man was the way 
in which he set himself to the study of grammar 
when nearing the age of sixty. *^When I was 
but a small lad I was put to work. If then I 

52 



"41;:' 



^» 



^C'-iT?"- 



,^ ' Ch 






■%:' ' '■' 
. -\..». 'i. ■ s. ■■■. - ■ , 



■m 






Sir Richard Arkwright 



iiil 



RICHAED ARKWRIOHT 

was not too young to earn my living, I am not 
now too old to learn to write and spell cor- 
rectly.'^ So the great *^ captain of industry '^ 
whose business cares occupied all his working- 
hours took time from his small allowance for 
rest to make up for the shortcomings of his 
early schooling. 

To a friend who wanted to know why one of 
the richest men of the realm should vex him- 
self with such tasks, he said, ^^That man is 
indeed poor who does not know or care where 
he lacks.'' 

The barber, turned inventor and manufac- 
turer, amassed a fortune of half a million 
pounds — vast wealth for those times — and was 
awarded the distinction of knighthood for his 
services to his country. 



53 



THE POET OF MANY INVENTIONS 

Edmund Cabtwkight (1743-1823) 

THE parson is a right good sort and a 
clever 'un that books could not addle nor 
the fine ways of rich folks spoil/' 

A bluff old British fanner, red-faced and 
shrewd, had stopped his plow at the end of a 
furrow to have a word with a neighbor across 
a hawthorn hedge. Both men were looking 
after the gracious figure of a man who had not 
been too much occupied with his thoughts to 
rein in his horse for a friendly greeting as he 
passed by. 

^'He always rides just so, at a walk, though 
any one can see he is at home in the saddle,'' 
replied the other approvingly. 

^* Mayhap he thinks of his Sunday preaching 
as he goes about," said the farmer. 

**He thinks o' more things than Sundays," 
54 



EDMUND CAETWEIGHT 

declared the other. ^^He thinks what he can 
do to help folks on Mondays and Saturdays 
as well. Have you heard what he did when 
Carter's lad was so bad off with the fever? 
He said to the mother, ^Have you some yeast 
handy? I know a case where a glass of it drove 
away a sickness like this. Will you let me try 
what it can doT And bless you! of course they 
let him have his way. Had he not told them 
about a cure for a sick cow and how to save 
their wheat crop? The lad began to get better 
that same day.'' 

^^And he 's as handy with tools as if he had 
not been born to books," returned the farmer. 
' ^ Many 's the time he '11 show you how to patch 
up and contrive things to make work a bit 
easier. They say he 's a wonderful friend when 
a loom needs a bit of tinkering. ' ' 

The gentle parson was at that moment think- 
ing of the hard work that fell to the lot of the 
cottagers in his parish. *^Poor people! All 
of them old before they have had a chance to be 
young!" he said to himself. ^^No time to walk 
out under the sky, to stretch their hearts as 

55 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

well as their legs and breathe freely the air of 
heaven. ' ' 

He sighed heavily, but soon shook himself 
free of his troubled thoughts and began to hum 
a happy air. A lark rose from the field, filling 
the sunshine with song. The parson's heart 
sang and his horse's hoofs seemed to beat out 
a tune. He was putting the gladness of the 
day into words — for since the time he first 
tasted the joys of learning and poetry at Ox- 
ford, Edmund C^rtwright had loved to set his 
thoughts to music — ^when he was roused by a 
merry greeting. 

^'How many miles away were you this time, 
friend PoetT^ called the squire, from his gar- 
den. "Not to look at a neighbor when he hails 
you twice ! And here are some gentlemen from 
Manchester you will want to talk with. They 
can tell you all about the new spinning-machine 
you were so curious to hear of." 

"Does the poet take an interest in me- 
chanics f asked one of the visitors. 

"Behold a man who can use his hands as well 
as his head ! ' ' cried the squire, heartily, 

"I am indeed interested in devices for saving 
56 



EDMUND CAETWEIGHT 

labor," said Cartwright, "and anything that 
promises to make lighter the load of the 
weavers must be of particular concern to ns; 
for, surely, of all people, their toil seems the 
hardest.'' 

^ * They will have to work harder than ever to 
keep up with the increased output of the spin- 
ning-mills, ' ' was the reply, ^ ' The day is passed 
when the loom can keep ahead of the supply of 
spun yarn." 

^'But cannot some machine be devised for 
weaving, as Arkwright's has met the problem 
of spinning I" asked the parson eagerly. 

"No, that is a diiferent matter," the Man- 
chester gentleman assured him. "It is clearly 
impossible. You cannot make a mechanical de- 
vice to take the place of the deft hands of the 
weaver. ' ' 

But Edmund Cartwright was not convinced. 
"I have seen an automaton play a game of 
chess," he contended. "If it is possible for 
a machine to make the complicated moves in 
that game, it is certainly reasonable to enter- 
tain the idea that a machine can be framed to 

57 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

make and repeat successively the three move- 
ments involved in weaving. ' ' 

During the following weeks the poet-parson 
was observed to be even more absent-minded 
than was his wont ; and the face he turned upon 
his Sunday congregation bore the marks of 
eager thought. *' Parson is surely working up 
something new,'' was the remark. 

Indeed, so fast did his ideas take shape that 
his hands lagged behind. He called in a car- 
penter and smith to work for him and a weaver 
to lay warp threads on the machine they fash- 
ioned. Then threads of heavy material, like 
that used in making sails, were indeed woven 
into cloth by the new device. 

In a letter to a friend Edmund Cartwright 
wrote : 

As I had never before turned my thoughts to the details 
of mechanism either in theory or practice, nor had seen a 
loom at work, nor knew anything of its construction, you 
will readily suppose that my first loom must have been a 
rude sort of machinery. The warp was laid perpendicularly, 
the reed fell with a force of at least half a hundred weight, 
and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough 
to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short, it required the 
strength of two powerful men to work the machine, at a 
slow rate, and for only a short time. Conceiving in my 

58 



EDMUND CAHTWRIGHT 

simplicity that I had accomplished all that was required, 
I then secured what I thought a most valuable property by 
a patent, 4th of April, 1785. This being done, I then 
condescended to see how other people wove; and you will 
guess my astonishment when I compared their easy modes 
of operation with mine. Availing myself, however, of what 
I then saw, I made a loom in its general principles nearly 
as they are now made. But it was not till the year 1787, 
that I completed my invention, when I took out my last 
weaving patent, August the 1st of that year. 

So determined was Cartwriglit to make his 
invention of practical service that he devoted 
his modest fortune to starting a factory where 
the newly discovered steam-engine of Watt 
furnished the power. This was in 1789. 

Two years later a Manchester firm signed a 
contract for fonr hundred looms, but here the 
weavers, whom he sought to help, nearly 
wrecked the venture. ^^His ^men of iron' will 
starve out workers of flesh and blood," they 
declared. And one might the factory was 
burned, and with it hundreds of the machines 
which represented the entire wealth of the gen- 
erous inventor. 

**The ways of business are too much for a 
simple scholar," lamented the poet-parson 
whimsically. **My poor earthen pot could not 

59 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

hold its own with the brass ones in the stream 
of commerce." 
But the merchants and factory-owners of 



Power Loom 

Manchester came to his rescue, begging Parlia- 
ment to recognize the value to the nation of 
his invention by an award that should at least 

60 



EDMUND CARTWRIGHT 

cover his losses; and a grant of ten thousand 
pounds was made to the inventor of the power- 
loom. 

This gave the poet, who had proved himself 
a mechanical genius as well as a scholar, the 
opportunity to try his hand at new devices. 
One of these was a wool-combing machine. 
Turning his attention to the farmers' prob- 
lems, he contrived machines to aid in planting 
and in reaping, also a device for kneading 
bread to lighten the labor of his own kitchen. 

Then he began to speculate on the possibility 
of making the steam-engine play a part in water 
travel. We are told that, when Robert Fulton 
was studying painting in England under Ben- 
jamin West, he met the enthusiastic inventor, 
who showed him a model he had fashioned of 
a boat propelled by steam. ' ' Mark my words, ' ' 
declared Edmund Cartwright, **the day is 
surely coming when steam will furnish the 
power in transportation both by land and 
water." 

But never while turning his hand to practical 
inventions did the gentle scholar lose his in- 
terest in poetry. *'At eighty he was still as 

61 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

merry and alert as a youth/' the poet Crabbe 
says of him in his letters. ''Few persons could 
tell a good story so well. I can just remember 
him, the portly, dignified old gentleman of the 
last generation, grave and polite, but full of 
humor and spirit. ' ' 



62 



THE YANKEE WHO CEOWNED 
KING COTTON 

Eli Whitney (1765-1825) 

THAT lad will never make a proper farmer, 
Mr. Whitney. You Ve let him potter 
about and tinker with tools until he has lost all 
taste for hard work. ' ' 

Mr. Whitney had been showing his neighbor 
a fiddle which the clever fingers of his twelve- 
year-old boy had fashioned. 

^^Yes, he 's not much use in the fields, but 
he 's fair crazy to be at the work-bench. I tell 
him that it 's all very well to have a turn at the 
tools on winter evenings, but that woodworking 
and the like will never make his fortune," re- 
plied Farmer Whitney. ^^ Still, he comes by 
his taste naturally enough. There 's many a 
fireside hereabouts that knows the comfort of 
chairs I Ve made, and you yourself know 
where to come when your wagon needs a new 

63 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

wheel. But I Ve never been one to neglect my 
crops for any fancy/' lie added. 

' ' Perhaps I '11 prove that I '11 not neglect my 
crops either ;, only they may be a different sort 
from those most people grow," put in the lad, 
boldly. 

It was soon proved that Eli Whitney could 
not only make and mend fiddles but also do 
many another job requiring skilful fingers. At 
the time of the Eevolutionary War, when he 
was still a boy in his early teens, he turned 
out a very profitable crop of nails — then in 
great demand because of the interrupted trade 
with England — and at various kinds of wood- 
work and metal-work he proved that he could 
surpass any mechanic in town. Indeed, the 
boy's business grew so that he set out to find a 
helper. This search took him forty miles from 
the little Massachusetts village, Westboro, 
where he had been born. This was the longest 
journey into the world he had yet made, and the 
mile-stones of that journey were the workshops 
that he visited. 

*^I brought back some one to help me turn 
out nails," said Eli, ''and I also brought back 

64 



ELI WHITNEY 

many useful notions that were of use in tlie 
tasks ahead." 

After the close of the war brought an end 
to the demand for Eli^s home-made nails, he 
was not slow to find opportunities in other di- 
rections. To-day it was a fashion in ladies' 
bonnets that made a market for a certain sort 
of long pins ; to-morrow he made such cleverly 
turned walking-sticks that another market for 
his wares was created. Here was a jack of all 
trades who seemed destined to prove himself a 
master of each. 

*^Well, there seems little doubt but what you 
have proved you can bring out crops of your 
own/' admitted Eli's father. *^A first-rate 
mechanic need never know want. " 

*^But I am not sure that I want to be a me- 
chanic. I want to go to Yale College and have 
a look at the world of books," was the astonish- 
ing reply. 

^'Well, Eli, you have always been a queer 
one," said Mr. Whitney, but there was a note 
of pride in his voice. ^^At nine you begged to 
leave your books for the work-bench and now 
at nineteen you want to go to school again. 

65 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

Wliat do you think about it, wifef he added. 

^^Why it is certain that Eli has neither the 
money nor the book-learning to take him to col- 
lege, ' ' was the matter-of-fact reply of the step- 
mother who always prided herself on doing her 
full duty, but who often went about it in a way 
that won small thanks. *^He has learned to 
make a good living; why should he plan to 
spend money instead of providing for him- 
self r' 

It was now quite clear to the young man that 
he could look for no help from others. He 
would have to make his own way. 

The odd jobs that filled his shop had a new 
interest. They were helping him on his road 
to college. And as he worked at his bench a 
book was always handy to keep him company. 

For four years he steered a straight course — 
working and saving, earning and learning — 
never for a moment losing sight of his goal. 
Any kind of work that offered the best return 
was eagerly seized. At planting and harvesting 
times he did farm work ; in the winter months 
he taught school; and always the skilled me- 

66 



ELI WHITNEY 

chanic was ready to find time for the tasks that 
came to his shop. 

When young Whitney was twenty-three his 
father said, ^ ^ You shall not have to wait longer 
for your chance. I will lend you what is needed 
in addition to your savings; I have faith that 
you will pay back what is given you both in 
money and in opportunity." 

We may say here in passing that within three 
years of Eli Whitney ^s graduation he had re- 
paid his father the money borrowed; and as 
for his use of the opportunities which a broader 
education offered, all the succeeding years of 
his life tell that story. 

The young man soon made himself at home 
in his new world of books. He was not ashamed 
to find himself some seven years older than 
most of his classmates. ^^I have surely gained 
something from my experience with practical 
work," he said to himself, ^^that should help 
me to make good use of all I have a chance to 
learn here." 

In those days college courses were not great- 
ly in advance of what most high schools offer 
to-day, and there were no technical or engi- 

67 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

neering departments to meet the needs of young 
men with gifts like those of Eli "Whitney. Still 
his talent could not be hidden. One day a piece 
of delicate experimental apparatus was found 
to be in need of repair. 

^*We must send that abroad where it was 
made,'' said the instructor. ^^ There is no place 
on this side of the water where it can be 
handled. ' ' 

^'Let me see what I can do with it," said 
young Whitney. ''I '11 promise not to leave it 
any the worse." 

Within a few days he asked the teacher to 
test his work, *'Why, I can hardly believe that 
it was ever out of order! You are certainly 
at home with tools!" exclaimed the professor. 

*^A first-rate mechanic was spoiled when jou 
took it into your head to come here," said a 
carpenter who was employed about the college 
buildings. 

When young Whitney was graduated, in his 
twenty-seventh year, he decided to take a po- 
sition as teacher and to read law in his spare 
time. A school in the South seemed to offer a 

6S 



ELI WHITNEY 

good opening, and lie took passage on a boat 
sailing from New York to Savannah. 

This voyage proved a journey into a new life. 
One of his fellow passengers, the widow of 
Nathanael Greene, the famous general of the 
Eevolution, took an interest in this brilliant 
young Northerner who was seeking his fortune 
in the South, and invited him to her home in 
Savannah. ^'You must begin to know Georgia 
by seeing what plantation life is like. Be one 
of our family until you find where you really 
want to take root," said Mrs. Greene. 

Mulberry Grove was a beautiful estate twelve 
miles from Savannah, which had been confis- 
cated at the time its owner took arms against 
the Colonies, and had been given to General 
Greene by the state of Georgia in recognition 
of his services to his country during the Eevo- 
lution. 

*^I seem to have stepped on a new planet, a 
happier star than that which knows the patch 
on the map we call New England,'' said the 
visitor as he looked at the live-oaks hung with 
festoons of soft gray moss and at the glossy- 
leaved magnolias where mocking-birds sang 

69 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

and jewel-like hummmg-birds darted abou^. In 
the fields beyond the grove that surrounded 
the mansion stretched the fields of rice and 
cotton where the negroes sang and whistled as 
they worked. 

At night Whitney loved to hear the negroes 
singing the old plantation airs as they sat in 
front of their cabins picking seeds from the 
*^ vegetable wool.'' It was a tedious task, and 
an overseer had to keep sharp watch to nudge 
the idle and spur on with a word the too-lively 
ones who were ready to drop their task for 
fun by the way. There were, however, the 
holiday times when banjos were brought out 
and all the evening was given over to merry- 
making, — to singing and dancing and a. feast 
of watermelon or roasted corn. 

^^ There is only one thing to mar my enjoy- 
ment of your happy South,'' said Whitney one 
day. *^I have just received news that makes it 
seem likely that I must leave it. Instead of a 
hundred guineas as salary, my school now pro- 
poses to pay me only fifty. Of course I cannot 
accept that." 

^'Surely not," agreed Mrs. Greene, heartily. 
70 



ELI WHITNEY 

^^But do not leave Georgia until we have a 
chance to prove there is a much fairer fortune 
in store for you here. Go on with the reading 
of law as you had planned, at Mulberry 
Grove for the present. The children will be 
overjoyed to learn that their new playmate 
whose wonderworking fingers are always ready 
to make or mend toys for them is not going 
away to keep school just yet.'' 

Indeed, Whitney's mechanical turn had 
proved of service on more than one occasion. 
That very evening, when Mrs. Greene cried out 
in vexation that her embroidery frame was 
fashioned so clumsily that it tore her delicate 
work, her guest came to the rescue and con- 
structed one more to her fancy. 

This incident was fresh in her mind next 
day when some visiting planters were speaking 
of the work of picking out cotton-seed from the 
fiber as the great handicap of the cotton in- 
dustry. 

**If only there were some machine to do this 
work, what a fortune there would be in our 
fields!" said Major Pendleton, who had been a 
comrade of General Greene. 

71 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

^^Ask Mr. Whitney to make you one!'' ex- 
claimed Mrs. Greene. ^ ' He can make anything. ' ' 

Major Pendleton looked curiously at the 
young man. ^^Is it possible that we have an 
inventor among usf" he said banteringly. 
^^Well, if you can work some magic to do this 
job, you 're the man for us." 

*^It is a new problem, gentlemen," replied 
Whitney, modestly. ^'I come from the North, 
where we never see the snow of your cotton- 
fields as it grows in the boll. But let me make 
a few experiments with your ^vegetable wool.' 
It may be that something will come of it." 

The next day Eli Whitney began his experi- 
ments by trying to pull the cotton-seeds from 
the lint by hand. ^'No wonder your negroes 
need a strict overseer to keep them at this 
task!" he exclaimed. '^I must see if there are 
not some machine fingers that will not tire to 
do this tedious job in place of fingers of flesh 
and blood." 

In a basement room of Mrs. Greene's man- 
sion he set up a work-bench and faced the prob- 
lem squarely. In course of time he constructed 
a ^ * gin. ' ' Its plan was simple enough : A num- 

72 



ELI WHITNEY 

ber of circular saws, so closely grouped on a 
shaft as to make a roller of points or teeth, 
seized the cotton as it was fed into the machine 
and pulled it through a sort of grating where it 
was separated from the seeds, which fell un- 
broken below the saws to the bottom of the 
hopper. A brush revolving rapidly in the op- 
posite direction from the roller cleared the 
teeth of lint. This was the cotton-gin, which, 
turned by hand, did in a moment with its hun- 
dreds of points the work which had formerly 
been done slowly and painfully by as many 
hands. 

It was no harder to turn that first cotton-gin 
than if it had been an ordinary grindstone, but 
what if it could have ground out the story of 
the hard work that had gone to its making! 
Its inventor had not only to construct the ma- 
chine but also to make most of his tools and 
make over his material. For instance, when 
he wanted sheets of iron plate for his circular 
saws there was none to be had. "While he was 
wondering where he might find something to 
serve his purpose, Mrs. Greeners small daugh- 

73 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

ter came to her friend ^'who could make any- 
thing " with a request. 

*^ Please make a cage for my bird," she 
begged. ' ' Here is a box of wire Mother got for 
it. I know you can make a beautiful cage. ' ' 

Mr. "Whitney always looked pleasant when he 
was asked to do something, but now his face 
shone as if the sun had suddenly come from 
behind a cloud. 

^ ' This wire sets me free from my cage ! " he 
said with a laugh of triumph. ^^Your singer 
shall have a very palace of a cage, and there '11 
be enough left to serve the turn of my cotton- 
picker ! ' ' 

As the bird sang on his new perch, Mr. Whit- 
ney whistled at his bench. His happy tune did 
not change when he found that the wire was 
too thick and that he must draw it out to a suit- 
able size. Nor did it quite die away when he 
found that he would have to fashion tools for 
this task. The wire was made of the required 
thinness and then a long series of experiments 
was made with different lengths and different 
arrangements until at last the right thing was 
hit upon. 

74 



ELI WHITNEY 

There had been a discouraged moment when 
Whitney could not see what was to be done to 
prevent the clogging of the wire teeth with the 
fiber. 

* ^ It seems to me something of this sort might 
keep you swept clean!'' laughed Mrs. Greene, 
picking up the brush from the hearth and bran- 
dishing it over the choked cylinder. 

''Why, of course!'' cried Whitney, echoing 
her laugh. ''It takes a woman to help us out 
when we can't see what is right before our 
eyes ! I '11 put in another brush roller to spin 
around in the opposite direction and snatch off 
with its bristles the lint that gets caught in the 
wire teeth." 

When this was accomplished, Mrs. Greene 
cried, ' ' Now let us call the neighbors in ! " Her 
assembled friends — many of whom were 
planters — were not slow to recognize what this 
invention would mean to them and to the South. 

"And it should mean a gold-mine to you, 
young man," they declared warmly. "Don't 
delay to take out a patent, or to send us a sup- 
ply of gins." 

' ^ I hate to throw my study of law overboard, 
75 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

and to strike out on the stormy sea that wrecks 
most inventors/' said Whitney, doubtfully. ^^I 
certainly have little spirit and no money for the 
struggle. ' ' 

Then Phineas Miller, the manager of Mrs. 
Greene's estate, said, *^Let us form a partner- 
ship. You furnish the brains and I '11 risk the 
cash needed." Whitney, who knew that Mr. 
Miller was as good as his word, agreed ; and the 
firm of Miller and Whitney was then and there 
formed. May 27, 1793. 

There were troublous times ahead for the 
firm. Despite the great wealth that the inven- 
tion brought to the planters, they sought to 
avoid sharing any of it with the inventor. Dis- 
honest men attempted to make similar gins, 
thus infringing his patent. There was a long 
and discouraging fight before Whitney could 
secure even a small part of the reward that 
should have been his. At last some of the 
Southern states levied a tax on gins in order 
to make an award to the man who '^had crowned 
King Cotton." South Carolina gave $50,000; 
North Carolina $20,000; Tennessee $10,000; 
and the other states together about $10,000. If 

76 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

Eli Whitney and his stanch ally, Phineas Mil- 
ler, had been working chiefly for a golden har- 
vest, they would have been disappointed and 
embittered men. 

But no one could look at Whitney — tall, com- 
manding, and kindly, a man of many interests 
and many friends — as one whose worth or 
whose happiness was to be measured by the 
dollar-mark. His inventive brain was always 
alert. Now he made a venture in the employ- 
ment of cement for the foundation and walls 
of his house, saying, ' ' The day is not far distant 
when this material will play a great part in the 
building of our cities." Now he busied himself 
with constructing various tools and machines 
as some need suggested to his original genius 
the way in which it might be met. But for none 
of these things would he take out patents. 

*^The experience I have had with patents in 
the case of the cotton-gin will last me through 
life," he used to say. 

What the cotton-gin meant in the develop- 
ment of the South may be indicated by noting 
that in 1796 cotton was so abundant that some 

78 



ELI WHITNEY 

plantation-owners began to fear that the mar- 
ket would be flooded. 

^^Well!'' cried one planter, gazing in awe at 
his bumper crop, ^*this is the end of cotton! 
There 's enough in my gin-house to-day to make 
stockings for all the people in America.'' He 
was unable to picture what the South was des- 
tined to do in clothing the people of the world. 

Eli Whitney was the man whose invention 
had brought this new tide of prosperity. He 
was the kingmaker who gave American cotton 
its power and place in the markets of the world. 



79 



BY-PEODUCTS 

A "WISE man once said that *^a weed is a 
plant whose use has not yet been found 
out." Our ignorance is measured by what we 
waste. Advance in knowledge and increased 
efficiency are measured by the removal of waste. 
Meat-packers find a use for all parts of the ani- 
mals in which they deal. The person who de- 
clared, *^ To-day all of the pig serves some 
purpose, except the squeal, ' ' was trying to em- 
phasize the way in which modern industry uses 
much that was formerly thrown aside. 

The story of the wealth that lies in the re- 
moval of waste is well illustrated by the story 
of the by-products of cotton. For hundreds 
of years, when the fibers that could be spun 
into thread had been separated from pods and 
seeds, the remainder was cast aside as useless. 
To-day, leaves, pods, and seeds make a most 
valuable fodder for cattle; the fluff that clings 

80 



BY-PEODUCTS 

to the seeds as they pass through the gin makes 
felt hats; other waste fiber is converted into 
paper ; the root furnishes a useful drug, and the 
bark of the cotton-stalk makes excellent bags 
and mats. The uses of the seeds, which before 
1860 were thrown away, would fill a volume. 
After the valuable oil which they contain is 
extracted to serve in the preparation of food- 
stuffs, medicine, and soap, the remainder is 
utilized as a food for cattle and also as a much- 
prized fertilizer. 

Indeed, we can begin to understand why cot- 
ton is called the "money crop'' of the South 
when we pass in review but a few of its prod- 
ucts. Dr. Scherer in his book, "Cotton as a 
World Power," quotes from a North Carolina 
professor of agriculture this spirited para- 
graph : 

You get up in the morning from a bed, clothed in cotton. 
You step out on a cotton rug. You let in the light by 
raising a cotton window-shade. You wash with soap made 
partly from cottonseed oil products. You dry your face 
on a cotton towel. You array yourself chiefly in cotton 
clothing. The "silk" in which your wife dresses is prob- 
ably mercerized cotton. At the breakfast table you do not 
get away from King Cotton; cottolene has probably taken 

81 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

the place of lard in the biscuit you eat. The beef and the 
mutton were probably fattened on cottonseed meal and 
hulls. Your "imported olive oil" is more likely from a 
Texas cotton farm than from an Italian villa. Your "but- 
ter" is probably a product of Southern cottonseed. The 
coal that burns in the fire may have been mined by the 
light of a cotton-oil lamp. The sheep from which your 
woolen clothing came were probably fed on cotton-seed. 
The tonic you take may contain an extract of cotton root- 
bark. Your morning daily may be printed on cotton waste 
paper — and even in the skirmish it tells about, the con- 
tending forces were clothed in khaki duck, slept under cot- 
ton tents, cotton was an essential in the high explosives that 
were used, and when at last war had done its worst, surgery 
itself called cotton into requisition to aid the injured and 
dying. 



I 



82 



INVENTIONS IN THE HOME 



I 



Work — ^work — work, 

Till the brain begins to swim; 
Work — work — work, 

Till the eyes are heavy and dim! 
Seam, and gusset, and band, 

Band, and gusset, and seam, 
Till over the buttons I fall -asleep, 

And sew them on in a dream! 

''The Song of the Shirt"— Thomas Hood. 



i 



INVENTIONS IN THE HOME 

THE inventions that set women free from 
household slavery mark important steps 
in human progress. When the mother of the 
home had to spin and weave the cloth, and make 
as well as mend all the clothing of her family, 
there was little time for anything but drudgery. 

We pity the savage mother with her baby 
strapped on her back as she hoes corn, cnts 
wood, and carries water. There is no room 
for thought or fancy, for smiles or tears, in 
such a life. She is only a dull, heavy-eyed beast 
of burden. 

But how many women of our America in 
^'the good old days'' had a like fate! How 
many housewives worked from dawn to dark, 
day in and day out, at tasks that were always 
doing and never done ! Most of them were old 
and worn as if with age before they had a 
chance to be young. Many of them went mad; 

85 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

their hearts and minds were crushed by the 
ceaseless, changeless grind as between heavy 
millstones. 

To-day, women, freed from household slav- 
ery, can give better care and training to their 
children than was possible in the old days. The 
housekeeper and drudge gives place to' the 
home-maker. And, since ^^the hand that rocks 
the cradle is the hand that rules the world'' — 
because the welfare of the men and women of 
to-morrow depends upon the happiness and 
well-being of the children of to-day — so what 
has brought advance to the women has brought 
progress to the race. When you help a man 
your gift may stop with him, but when you help 
a mother you give to a family. 



86 



THE INVENTOR OF THE SEWING- 
MACHINE 

Elias Howe (1819-1867) 

A SMALL boy of six years was busy stitch- 
ing wire teeth into the heavy *' cards" 
that were to be used in straightening out the 
cotton fiber in the mills of New England. His 
father was a hard-working farmer, but he could 
not coax from his stony fields crops large 
enough to feed eight hungry children, so he had 
to turn his hand to other tasks such as grinding 
meal for the farmers of the neighborhood, saw- 
ing and planing boards and splitting shingles. 
The boys and girls of the family early learned 
how to help out in various tasks, for one pair 
of hands could not do everything. 

'^ Maybe some day I '11 make a mill to stitch 
these old cotton cards," boasted the little boy, 
whose fingers soon tired. 

87 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

Elias Howe was never tired, however, watcli- 
ing his father ^s mills at work, and it was a 
prond day when he could help with the grinding 
and the sawing. He was a lively lad and full 
of fun; and he managed to make merry while 
he worked about the busy machines or took his 
part in the farm tasks. The ways of machinery 
were his chief delight. 

*'The boy takes after his uncles; they were 
never happy unless they were working with 
tools and contriving new ways of doing things," 
said his father. 

The two brothers of the older Elias Howe 
had more than an ordinary inventive turn. One 
of them, William Howe, invented a truss or 
supporting frame that is still in use for roofs 
and bridges. 

Little Elias Howe was constantly getting val- 
uable ideas from what went on about him, and 
his ready skill with tools was won through 
doing the everyday tasks of home and farm 
that fell to his lot. Those were times when one 
did not at once go to a store to buy what was 
needed in the way of household utensils and 
farm equipment. People first studied how to 

88 




Courtesy of The Mentor 



Elias Howe 



ELIA8 HOWE 

make or mend what was at hand. Elias became 
an adept in the art of piecing together and mak- 
ing over things. As he learned by doing his 
wits became as nimble as his fingers, and his 
cheerfulness over a task made him a general 
favorite. 

*^No one like Elias for grit and gumption/' 
people said. ^'He is a hard-working lad, but 
easy company. And a boy who sticks to things 
the way he does has something in him that 
deserves to succeed.'' 

Elias Howe went to school in his native vil- 
lage — Spencer, Massachusetts, about twenty 
miles from Worcester — during the winter 
jpionths ; and in the spring of his twelfth year 
he began to work for his *^keep" on a neigh- 
boring farm. 

^^ There '11 be one boy less to feed at home," 
he said. ^^And I'll learn the A-B-C's of 
farming. ' ' 

But the boy, though wiry and willing, had 
never been strong, and, moreover, a trouble- 
some lameness made him unfitted for heavy 
farm work. So he went back to work in his 
father's mills until he was sixteen, when he 

89 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

started as apprentice in a machine-shop at 
Lowell. When, two years later, a panic led to 
the closing of all the mills in that town, Howe 
went to Boston, where he found a place in the 
shop of Ari Davis, a manufacturer and repairer 
of surveying-instruments and timepieces. 

*' Davis was an odd duck — ^you wouldn't 
think to look at his queer head that it held so 
many ideas,'' Howe said years later. ^'But 
instrument-makers and inventors of different 
machines knew where to go for help and sug- 
gestions, as bees know where to find honey. 
Nothing could have been better for me than the 
experience I got in Davis 's shop. It was there 
that my idea of the sewing-machine was born. 
A man who was trying to invent a knitting- 
machine dropped in one day. ^Why bother 
about that thing!' said Davis. *Why don't you 
make a sewing-machine!' " 
. Young Howe listened carelessly. He did not 
dream that the turning-point in his life had 
been reached. His attention was caught by the 
boastful emphasis with which he heard Davis 
declare, '*A sewing-machine would be no great 
wonder! I could make one, myself!" Then 

90 



ELIAS HOWE 

the idea flashed into the mind of the appren- 
tice, who since he was a tiny boy, had longed to 
make machines, that he might be the fortunate 
inventor. 

*^Many people try things; few have the per- 
severance to carry their attempts on to suc- 
cess,'' he said to himself. ^'I shall win by 
sticking to this idea till something comes of it. 
There should be fame and fortune in it, for it 
will save hands much weary work. It will 
mean a new life to women who, like my mother, 
have a family of children to keep in clothes.'' 

So he set to work with a will. As a starting- 
point, Howe knew machinery as an Indian 
knew woodcraft. He could hardly remember 
the time when he had not understood the ways 
of wheels, ratchets, and springs. At Lowell he 
had had practical experience with spinning- 
machines and power-looms. He was, moreover, 
used as we have seen, to exercising ingenuity 
in making things. So it was not quite a leap 
in the dark when he said, ^ * I will make a sewing- 
machine ; I will not turn my face from the task 
till I have won success. ' ' 

Perhaps if he could have seen the dark way 
91 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

ahead his heart might have faltered. Would 
the bright fortune that beckoned at the end of 
the long road have been able to lure him on 
despite all the trials and hardships that were to 
test his soul before he was to see any result of 
his work? 

As Howe watched his wife sewing he tried to 
imagine a machine that would be able to go 
through the same motions. This led him off on 
a false trail. There were many attempts and 
many failures before the idea suddenly flashed 
through his brain that his machine was not 
obliged to move as the hand did. Why should 
his mighty stitcher that was to do the work of 
many hands not move in a manner of its own? 

**A mere trifle — like a chance thought^ — often 
seems to be the thing that changes a whole life 
story/' said Howe. *'But perhaps there is no 
such thing as chance. It may be what we call 
little things are those that really count for 
mosf 

At any rate, the idea of a machine working 
out a new stitch was the turning-point in the 
story of his invention. Machines that made a 
chain-stitch were in existence j he had probably 

92 



ELIAS HOWE 

seen or heard of one of these. He dreamed, 
however, of making something that would work 
in a new and better way. It is small wonder 
that he imagined a shuttle as playing a part in 
his machine, for all his life he had seen shuttles 
flying to and fro in looms. 

'^Why not make a sort of loom stitch where 
one thread is woven in and out with another T' 
he said to himself. There were more trials and 
failures, but he realized exultingiy that he was 
on the right track. At last he hit upon his lock- 
stitch, where his needle plying ever up and down 
in the same spot threw, when under the cloth, a 
loop which was interwoven with the thread from 
a shuttle that clicked back and forth at regular 
intervals. 

Elias Howe was now sure that he had a good 
thing, but he knew that there were many points 
in which his machine needed improvement. He 
must have time to experiment and to make a 
perfect model. What was he to do ! He had to 
earn the living of his family; and with all his 
skill and hard work he often received only nine 
dollars a week. That gave him no chance to 
save or to work on his invention. 

93 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

**At that time I was frequently so tired when 
I came in from my day's work,'' said Howe, 
*Hhat I could do nothing but go to bed, longing 
for a rest without a to-morrow calling me out 
to the same grind. I made up my mind that the 
only chance of bettering myself and my family 
lay in the direction of my invention, so I went 
to live at my father's house. He had faith in 
my venture, and for a while under his roof I 
gave all my time to the sewing-machine. ' ' 

'^ Young Elias Howe is a clever workman," 
said the neighbors, shaking their heads. ^^It is 
a pity that he spends his time on queer inven- 
tions when he ought to be getting steady em- 
ployment. ' ' 

This chapter in Howe 's life came to a sudden 
close. A fire destroyed his father's shop and 
for a time left the older man without means to 
help his son. But if trouble seemed ever to be 
dogging the footsteps of young Howe, Hope 
stood at the turn of the road to give him cour- 
age. He found a friend in need, a friend who 
had just come into a tidy legacy and who 
dreamed of a lucky stroke that would suddenly 
turn it into a real fortune. 

94 



ELIAS HOWE 

**Come and live with me," said George 
Fisher. ^^Yonr family will have a comfortable 
home while you spend all your time on the sew- 
ing-machine. We will form a partnership and 
when success comes we will share the profits.'' 

*^But I must work and save long enough to 
get money for necessary tools and materials 
for my model,'' protested Howe. 

i i Turn to your partner ! ' ' said Fisher. * * Here 
is five hundred dollars which I will risk in the 
cause. ' ' 

After months of work, when each of the part- 
ners was wearing a suit of clothes stitched on 
the completed model, it seemed as if success 
must be at hand. But, behold, an unforeseen 
difficulty! Here was the wonderful invention 
ready and waiting for a world that did not seem 
to know or care that it stood in need of just 
what the Howe sewing-machine could supply. 

Clothing manufacturers shook their heads, 
* * It will cost us a great deal of money to make 
a new start with your machines," they said. 
*^Why should we do that and perhaps bring 
down on us riots from people thrown out of 

95 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

work, wlien we are doing very well just as we 
arer' 

But Howe refused to take this rebuff seri- 
ously. *^It may take a little time,'' he said, 
'^but ill the end people can't help seeing that 
what saves labor lengthens life. That is only 
common sense.'' 

The next step was to take out a patent. 

^ ' That means a journey to the Patent Office," 
said Howe. * ' But where am I to get the money 
for the fare to Washington! I cannot look to 
Fisher for another loan ; he will rue the day he 
ever heard of me and my sewing-machine." 

**Will you man an engine for a while!" he 
was asked. ''Another locomotive engineer is 
badly needed just now." 

'*I 'm your man," replied the inventor, 
pluckily. But more than grit and gumption are 
needed to run a train. Howe 's frail body, worn 
by toil and hardships, could not stand the strain 
of the heavy work and the exposure to sudden 
changes of heat and cold. Just in the nick of 
time Fisher came to the rescue. 

'*Are you mad!" he cried. *'Why, man, you 
are killing yourself! There are a few dollars 

96 




Howe's Sewing Machine 



ELIAS HOWE 

more where the others came from to take us 
together to Washington. I find you need 
watching.'' 

When at the capital, Howe seized the oppor- 
tunity of exhibiting his rapid stitcher at a fair, 
where it drew wondering crowds who one and 
all admired but turned away without even con- 
sidering the possibility of buying such a ma- 
chine. Fisher's faith in the venture was all at 
once dashed to the ground. 

'^If I could only see a chance of getting back 
the two thousand dollars that I have put into 
your machine, I should not ask for a share in a 
fortune," he said gloomily. Then, looking at 
the worn face of his friend, he added gener- 
ously, *^You have risked more than I have." 

Elias Howe refused to lose heart, however. 
* ' The place really to get a start is England, ' ' he 
said. ^ ' Surely the large garment factories there 
will open their doors to us." 

The journey to England was taken with high 
hopes that made the hard conditions of steerage 
travel seem as nothing. And, sure enough, a 
London manufacturer, William Thomas, who 
saw at a glance the value of the machine in his 

97 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

business, bought one for $1,217 on condition 
that he might patent the invention in England. 

* ' You can do nothing yourself on this side of 
the water,'' he said. ^^It is enough for you to 
manage your ventures in America. I will agree 
to pay you three pounds for every machine that 
I sell.'' 

This seemed a fair offer and Howe was indeed 
helpless. Pressing debts must be paid without 
delay. He took Thomas's promise in good 
faith, and at the same time agreed to work for 
three pounds a week at the task of making a 
machine especially fitted for the heavy stitching 
required in some branches of the manufacture. 

When this new stitcher was completed 
Thomas made no attempt to conceal his readi- 
ness to part company with his inventor-work- 
man. And Howe never received a penny for 
the machines sold in England on which Thomas 
was realizing a royalty of ten pounds each. 

It is said that the darkest hour is just before 
the dawn. The lowest ebb of Howe's fortunes 
had now been reached. Perhaps he was saved 
from despair by the faith that a new day was 
about to break. 

98 



ELIAS HOWE 

Pawning his precious first machine and his 
American patent, and pulling his forlorn bag- 
gage on a hand-cart to the wharf, he took pas- 
sage in the steerage to return to New York and 
the daily grind of a machine workman. He 
had scarcely landed when news reached him that 
his wife was dying. 

^' What good of success now when the one who 
has shared all my hardships cannot have a part 
in better days, even if I winT' thought the 
unhappy inventor. 

Now it seemed as if he must give up the 
struggle. His friends scarcely recognized the 
heartbroken, hopeless man. ^^He has grown 
old in a single day ! ' ' they said. * ' What a pity, 
when good nature and cheer were always his 
way no matter what trouble came. And there 
is n't a better mechanic in America, if he could 
be persuaded to give up his crazy inventions.'* 

But just at this time news came that the 
sewing-machine was becoming famous, and that 
those who had taken advantage of his absence 
in London to steal his invention were about to 
make the fortune for which he had labored in 
vain. This wrong roused something of the old 

99 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

spirit in Elias Howe. Even such an able oppo- 
nent as Isaac Morton Singer^ whose name has 
become a household w^ord with the sewing- 
machines he manufactured and sold, found that 
he had more to reckon with than at first ap- 
peared. Howe defended his case ably in court 
after court and the justice of his claims were 
always fully and freely recognized. From the 
f orlornest poverty, with his models and patents 
pawned in a foreign land, he at last rose above 
every obstacle and won success. 

The way in which this victory was made pos- 
sible by his father — ^who from first to last had 
faith in him and came to the rescue when all 
else failed, even mortgaging his farm to pro- 
vide the money for pushing the claims of his 
patents — is a beautiful and inspiring story. 

The success of the sewing-machine owed much 
to the business ability and shrewd advertising 
of Singer, who had been an actor and theatrical 
manager and knew how to employ to the utmost 
the devices of lime-light and bill-board in his 
big venture. *'For success you need not only a 
live idea but an alert promoter, ' ' he said. * ^ The 
people will not go after a new thing; it must go 

100 



ELIAS HOWE 

after them." He organized the business on 
sound and permanent lines, and he was quick 
to see and apply new inventions that would add 
to the effectiveness of the machine. The 
treadle, in place of a wheel turned by hand, and 
a needle moving up and down instead of side- 
ways were improvements made by Singer. 

Howe was during his last years a rich man, 
and happy in seeing his wealth a source of 
happiness and comfort not only to his family 
and friends but to many others. The thought of 
the lightened toil in households everywhere, due 
to his labors, always made his eyes kindle and 
a glow transfigure the worn lines of his face. 
'^It would have been worth all the years of 
struggle even if I had not lived to taste suc- 
cess,^' he said. 

One of his chief rewards was the thought of 
his machines working without rest day and 
night on the uniforms, shoes, tents, knapsacks 
and cartridge-boxes for the Union soldiers dur- 
ing the Civil War. Many car-loads of sand- 
bags for their defense were also rushed to the 
front with a despatch that, but for Howe's 
invention, would have been unthinkable. 

101 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

**You have served your country more than 
you could have done if you had been a regi- 
ment in the field!" protested a friend when 
Howe talked of enlisting. 

This seemed to put a new idea into the in- 
ventor's mind. Through his energy and in- 
fluence he mustered the Seventeenth Regiment 
of Connecticut Volunteers and he provided all 
the officers with horses. 

** You must go as our colonel," the men voted. 

''I am grateful for the honor and for your 
confidence," Howe replied, ^'but I should not 
be worthy of either if I did not know my limita- 
tions well enough to decline. I shall, however, 
go with you in the ranks." 

Despite lameness and failing health, Private 
Howe served some weeks as regimental post- 
master, riding from the camp near Baltimore 
back and forth to the city every day with mail- 
bags which seemed doubly his charge because 
they had been stitched on one of his own 
machines. 

But the inventor's health did not permit him 
to see active service for long. He lived, indeed, 
only a few years to enjoy the fruits of his hard- 

102 



ELIAS HOWE 

won success. He died in 1867, at the early age 
of forty-eight, leaving to others the opportunity 
and the credit of carrying to completion the 
improvements on his machine which he had 
dreamed of making. 

*'I used to see him often going about the 
house with a shuttle in his hand," said his 
daughter. ^'He never gave up trying to turn 
his ideas to good account." 

For Elias knew that true success lies not in 
the reward at the end of the journey but in the 
spirit that, having traveled hopefully, looks 
ever on to some new goal of effort. And if one 
could have put into words the message of his 
last days, I think it would have been this : 

*'I have worked much; I have won much. 
Now I am content to leave the struggle and the 
reward to those who will go on with my work. 
For no one lives or dies to himself, and even 
when we realize it least, we are all workers and 
sharers together." 



103 



THE DAY OF EUBBEE 



It is often repeated that "necessity is the mother of in- 
vention." It may with equal truth be said that inventors 
are the children of misfortune and want. Probably no 
class of the community, in any country, receive a smaller 
compensation for their labors than do inventors. . . . There 
is, however, this consolation, — success has crowned their 
attempt, and they leave the world better off for having lived 
in it. 

Charles G-oodtear. 



THE DAY OF EUBBEE 

IT has been said that he who makes a tool 
adds to man^s life. Then what of the gift 
of a new substance like vnlcanized rubber, and 
all the many helps to fuller life that it has made 
possible? 

Think of the changes that rubber alone has 
brought to modern life. The white man's world 
first knew it in 1770, when the discovery was 
made that the gum from the tears of Brazil's 
caoutchouc ('^weeping wood'') trees would rub 
out pencil marks. So it earned the name by 
which it has ever since been known, — rubber. 

Travelers from the land of rubber exhibited 
curious native-made shoes of what seemed a 
magic waterproof quality. Then an English- 
man named Mackintosh invented a process of 
waterproofing cloth by working a solution of 
rubber into the warp and woof of certain fab- 
rics. But his *^ mackintoshes" fell into disfavor 

107 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

because they took on a stubborn hardness in 
winter and became unpleasantly sticky in the 
heat of summer. 

Then came a man who despite every dif- 
ficulty and discouragement rescued rubber for 
the use of man. After years of patient experi- 
mentation he arrived at the process that we 
know as vulcanization. It was this inventor, 
Charles Goodyear, who ushered in ^^the day of 
rubber/' which a writer in London ^' Punch" 
celebrates in the following lines : 

For centuries a tropic plant. 

Obscure and insignificant, 

Common to both worlds, West and East, 

I did no good to man or beast. 

Yet now my rich and viscous juice, 

Turned to a locomotive use, 

Has lent the rigid chariot wheel 

The limber movements of the eel. ^ 

And oils that kindle and explode 

Have made me Monarch of the Road. 

Think of the various roles that rubber plays 
in the a:ffairs of men. You want its elastic 
quality: here are hundreds of articles of daily 
use from rubber bands to automobile tires. 
You are looking for protection from wet 
weather: here are boots, coats, and tarpaulins 

108 



THE DAY OF RUBBER 

at your service. Again, when you want an air- 
tight substance to make fast the covers of fruit- 
jars, or one that is a non-conductor of electricity 
with which to insulate wires, rubber meets the 
need. 

The vital importance of rubber to the world 
to-day was shown during the war, when the 
most desperate means were taken to smuggle 
small quantities past the British blockade into 
Germany and German citizens were punished 
for throwing away articles made of the pre- 
cious substance. And it will be remembered 
that when the first merchant submarine re- 
turned from its spectacular trip across the At- 
lantic it carried a cargo of rubber. 

We do indeed live in a rubber age. *'As the 
use of animal skins for shoes paved the world 
with leather, so the inventor of pneumatic tires 
and rubber soles and heels has cushioned the 
world with rubber." 



109 



A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF INVENTION 
Charles Goodyear (1800-1860) 

CHARLES GOODYEAR had finished his 
arithmetic while the others of his class 
were still, with knit brows or screwed-up faces, 
wrestling with the problems of the day. He was 
idly playing with a problem of his own making, 
— a problem bound np in a small lump of India 
rubber. 

'^It 's strange stuff, when you stop to think 
about it,'' he said to himself. ^'How can it be 
so tough and so stretchy at the same timeT' 
Then he began to finger a thin scale of the same 
puzzling substance that had been peeled from 
a bottle. "I think it might make first-rate 
aprons and other useful things if one could roll 
it out in the right way and keep it somehow 
from melting and sticking together,'' he 
hazarded. 

110 



CHAELES GOODYEAE 

When the boy's class was called, he rose 
promptly to his task ; but the idea that the bit of 
rubber had brought remained with him after 
the affairs of school and sums were forgotten. 

He was a quick, studious lad, this Charles 
Goodyear. It seemed as if the mysteries of 
books had no terrors for him. Printed pages 
that looked strange and forbidding to many 
others talked quite simply to Charles. ^'He 
should be a minister,'' the neighbors agreed. 

For a while the boy accepted it as settled that 
he should one day wear the black suit and the 
serious look of a devoted pastor, like the leader 
of their church at Naugatuck. To this little 
village, eighteen miles from New Haven, Mr. 
Goodyear had removed when Charles was a 
very young lad, to make use, in his business, of 
the water-power of the swift river. 

An American manufacturer in the early days 
of the nineteenth century was a real pioneer. 
Amasa Goodyear made buttons — the first pearl 
ones in America — and during the War of 1812 
supplied the Government with metal buttons. 
He also made clocks, spoons, and farming-tools. 

^'An incident of my boyhood which made a 
111 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

deep impression on my mind/' said Charles 
Goodyear, '^was my father's experience with 
hay-forks. He succeeded in making a light, 
springy implement of steel, a great improve- 
ment on the heavy iron articles then in use. 
But it was soon apparent that the very excel- 
lence of these forks caused them to be looked 
on with suspicion by the people who were to 
profit by them. They were so different; they 
could not be practical and durable, it was ob- 
jected. We had to give some of our product to 
neighboring farmers and beg them to grant us 
a trial in order to get a single one of our articles 
in use. I saw then that in business a man 
needed the resolution of the pioneer backed by 
the determination to do good to people in spite 
of themselves." ^ 

When Charles was a lad of fifteen he gave up 
the idea of being a minister. He saw that his 
father was not able to send him to college, in- 
deed, that he could ill spare his help in his 
business. '^Besides, it may be that the hard- 
ware trade needs men who want to make the 
world better even more than churches do,'' he 
thought. Perhaps something of the pioneer 

112 




Courtesy of The Mentor 



Charles Goodyear 



CHAELES GOODYEAE 

spirit of the boy^s ancestor, Stephen Goodyear 
(who was, after Governor Eaton, the chosen 
leader of the first settlers of New Haven) made 
him long to blaze a new trail. 

* ' I think that my place is in the world of busi- 
ness after all," he said when people asked why 
he had given up the idea of college. ^^I like to 
work with hands and head together.'' 

At seventeen he went to Philadelphia, where 
he served for four years as apprentice to a 
hardware merchant, endeavoring to master 
every phase of the trade. Then he returned to 
his father's shop. He soon showed a wonder- 
ful skill in the use of tools and a cleverness in 
contriving ways of improving the various 
implements turned out by the Goodyear 
manufactory. 

^ ^ His gift was in the way of mechanics, after 
all," people said. 

But Charles knew better. ^ ' I have no natural 
knack that way," he explained to one of his 
friends. ^^In fact, I even hate the whirr and 
whirl of machinery. But I long to make poor, 
clumsy things better. They seem to cry out to 
be improved. I should want to do it even if I 

113 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

did not have to earn a living. It should be pos- 
sible for a business man to show that he cares 
for something more than the money that comes 
in and to live according to a better maxim than 
that which says : ' Things should be made so that 
they will not last too long. ' ' * 

When Goodyear was twenty-four years old he 
married and two years later set up in Phila- 
delphia a hardware store stocked with goods 
from his father's workshop. After he had suc- 
ceeded, despite the general prejudice against 
American-made articles, in building up a trade 
that reached to many sections of the country, 
his business failed because his kindly, trusting 
nature led him into giving credit wherever it 
was asked. Money was slow in coming in and 
some dealers who had taken his goods and his 
credit never met their bills. There came dark 
days when Goodyear, who assumed full respon- 
sibility for his firm, was put in prison for debt. 
Never for a moment losing heart, however, he 
had his bench brought to the jail and worked 
there to complete inventions that he was sure 
would be the means of repaying all his creditors 
as well as meeting the needs of his family. 

114 



CHAELES GOODYEAE 

**It must have been a bitter experience to go 
under through no fault of yours/' Goodyear 's 
friends said, '^and to see others who had more 
capital to weather the days of bad debts reap a 
harvest out of the business you had built up and 
the goods of your own making.'' 

^'Well," Goodyear replied, with his slow, 
thoughtful smile, *^I don't think you can prove 
the worth of a man — or of his career — in dollars 
and cents. I am not disposed to grieve because 
others have gathered the fruits of my planting. 
Man has real cause for regret when he sows and 
no one reaps." 

For ten years Charles Goodyear was con- 
stantly besieged by the demands of those who 
held claims against Eis business, and through 
the harsh laws of the time he was again and 
again imprisoned, since he refused to declare 
himself bankrupt. This would have meant free- 
dom from all claims, but at the cost of turning 
over all that remained of his business, including 
his unfinished inventions. 

^^And I did not want to be released from any- 
thing ; I only asked the chance to pay to the last 
penny," Goodyear mourned. **But it is cer- 

115 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

tain tliat if one's conscience is clear and 
his purpose true he can find that even an 
experience such as mine is not without its silver 
lining. For I know that it is possible to 
find happiness everywhere, even within prison 
walls/' 

Later, Goodyear must have more fully appre- 
ciated that the trouble which made him yield 
first and last all the rewards of his agricultural 
inventions to others was a blessing in disguise, 
since because of it he turned his efforts into an 
entirely new channel where lay his real life- 
work. 

One day while looking about a New York 
wareroom containing rubber goods, he chanced 
to observe that the life-preservers were defec- 
tive, and, returning a few days later, he oif ered 
the merchant an improved tube for inflating 
them. 

*^You are a clever inventor," declared the 
gratified merchant. ^^Now, if you could only 
manage to hit on some way to prevent rubber 
from spoiling in hot weather you might make a 
fortune for yourself and at the same time save 
our factories from failure. We have risked all 

116 



CHAELES GOODYEAR 

our capital in this business and unless help 
comes we must go to the wall. ' ' 

Charles Goodyear looked at the man in amaze- 
ment. It seemed impossible that they should 
have gone so far without first having overcome 
that difficulty. In a flash he remembered how 
-as a boy at school he had marveled over the 
wonderful properties of rubber. Now he said 
to himself, ^^ Perhaps it remains for me to make 
this discovery that will bring to the world a new 
gift. It is true that I am ignorant of science, 
but new truth is often hidden from the learned 
and made known as if by accident to the one 
who perseveres and who observes everything re- 
lated to the object of his search.'' 

Soon Goodyear was so intent upon the quest 
that he could think of nothing but rubber. It 
was as if upon learning the secret of tanning 
or curing this substance so that it might be 
unchanged by changes of heat and cold de- 
pended not only his fortune but life itself. 

He knew that Americans began to import 
gum elastic from Brazil in 1820, when he was 
learning the hardware business in Philadelphia. 
Crudely formed shoes, also brought from South 

117 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

America, sold for a good price because of their 
waterproof character. It seemed natural to 
believe that clever Yankees might succeed at 
this craft better than the dusky natives of the 
land of rubber trees and reap a goodly har- 
vest. Much capital was put into the busi- 
ness. Beautifully fashioned shoes, coats, and 
other articles were made of the unmanufactured 
gum which, having been brought as ballast in 
ships from Brazil, was obtained at a small cost. 
A ready market was found for these attractive 
products and more capital was invested. 

But alas, the cold clutch of winter put the 
American-made rubber garments to an unfore- 
seen test. In a speech which Daniel Webster 
made some years later, defending Goodyear 's 
title to the invention which made rubber serv- 
iceable to man, he said : " I well remember that I 
had some experience in this matter myself. A 
friend in New York sent me a very fine cloak of 
India-rubber, and a hat of the same material. 
I did not succeed very well with them. I took 
the cloak one day and set it out in the cold. It 
stood very well by itself. I surmounted it with 
the hat, and many persons passing by supposed 

118 



CHARLES GOODYEAE 

they saw standing by the porch the Farmer of 
Marshfield/' 

With warm weather there came an even more 
crushing blow to the dealers in the new rubber 
goods. Their interesting articles began to melt 
away, and with them the capital and the credit 
of the Roxbury Rubber Company. 

Goodyear 's sympathy and zeal were both 
'enlisted in the cause. He knew the wrongs and 
the bitterness of business failure where the for- 
tunes of the innocent and helpless are often 
wrecked through the fault or the misfortune of 
others. Besides, it seemed to him clear that 
human beings stood in need of just what this 
puzzling new substance could supply. There- 
fore it remained for some one to remove the 
difficulties that stood in the way of its use. And 
he was persuaded that Charles Goodyear was 
the man chosen for this task. Here was his 
opportunity and his real mission. As a knight 
of old he accepted the challenge of fate and set 
forth to win rubber for the use of man. With 
the determination and the ardor of a crusader 
he set about his life-work. 

He began without equipment, mixing some of 
119 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

tlie gum elastic by hand and pressing it out in 
thin sheets with his wife's rolling-pin on a back- 
ing of flannel. Of this rubber-covered goods he 
made shoes, and set them in a row to wait for a 
change of season. 

^^My work always proceeded slowly because 
perforce I must often wait months for the frosts 
of winter and then for the heat of summer to 
put its worth to the trial/' Goodyear explained. 
^*I had indeed to 4earn to labor — and to wait' !" 

It occurred to Goodyear that the stickiness of 
the rubber might be due to the turpentine with 
which it had been mixed; and, learning that 
^there were on the market some casks of rubber 
sap diluted with alcohol, he resolved to put the 
matter to the test. Perhaps of this he could 
make the rubber that should answer his 
purpose. 

Jerry, the lively Irishman who was at this 
time Mr. Goodyear 's helper, knew of the in- 
ventor's hope. ^* 'T would be fun to give him a 
surprise like, and bring a smile to his counte- 
nance!" said Jerry to himself. So the night 
the new rubber arrived he spread the liquid 
gum over his work-trousers as he had seen Mr. 

120 



CHAELES GOODYEAR 

Goodyear cover his pieces of cambric and flan- 
nel. The result seemed highly satisfactory. 

*^ That's the thrick!" said Jerry, gleefully. 
*'I '11 show that an Irishman can beat a Yankee 
at the inventing. ' ' 

All went well. The rubber gave a fine glazed 
surface to the overalls, and Jerry sat down 
complacently in front of the fire to go on with 
his appointed task of mixing the gum ; but when 
he attempted to rise he found it was impossible 
even to move. The legs of his trousers were 
stuck firmly together, and Jerry himself v/as 
fastened down to his work-bench. The inventor 
did indeed smile when he came to the rescue 
and cut his helper free of the rubber trap. 

^*Well, Jerry, you 've proved beyond doubt 
that we can't blame our troubles on the turpen- 
tine," he said. ^^The rubber 's the real rogue, 
and I '11 not rest till I bring it to terms. ' ' 

But this dramatic display of the stickiness of 
rubber completely discouraged Goodyear 's 
friends. They refused to help or encourage him 
further with his experiments. *^Any sane man 
should see now that it's no use," they said. 

But Goodyear found a little home for his 
121 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

family in a neighboring village and the means 
of paying its rent from the sale of his furniture. 
To further the work his wife even sold the pre- 
cious linen that she had spun by hand in her 
girlhood days. 

'^If only, like the girl in the fairy tale, I could 
learn the trick of spinning gold ! ' ' she said, smil- 
ing bravely. 

^^Fate will spin a golden thread for many 
perhaps, because of what we are willing to do 
— and to do without, for a while now," replied 
Goodyear. 

But many trials and much discouragement 
had to be met and mastered before the golden 
fortune came. 

A series of tests were made with various 
chemicals. One day Goodyear 's hopes were 
raised by the discovery that when the gum 
elastic and magnesia were boiled in lime-water 
the stickiness disappeared. But alas, he saw 
that a dash of acid quickly ate away the lime 
coating, revealing the same melting rubber be- 
neath, and he knew that the remedy was still to 
be sought. Then the day came when he noticed 
that where a little nitric acid had come in con- 

122 



CHAELES GOODYEAE 

tact with his rubber the stickiness was gone. 
*' Perhaps this is my chance, — mj door of op- 
portunity if I can learn to fit the key/' he said. 
Eagerly he followed up the hint with experi- 
ments, and developed the acid-gas process of 
treating rubber, from which he now made table- 
covers, aprons, and similar articles. 

These were satisfactory in every way, and it 
seemed that success was at last his. A manu- 
facturer agreed to take him into partnership 
and begin making the rubber articles on a large 
scale. But then — once more Fortune turned her 
wheel and Goodyear was again down and with- 
out the means to provide food for his family. 
For a great panic came; many banks closed 
their doors and many businesses were wrecked. 
Among those who failed was the manufacturer 
who had undertaken to turn out the rubber 
articles by the acid-gas process. 

Afterward Goodyear said : '^It was in the end 
easy to understand. I was not to be allowed to 
pause in my labors until I had arrived at the 
goal and learned the secret of vulcanization. 
Under the spur of necessity I kept on until a 
new gift was won." 

123 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

It was indeed a sharp goad, the necessity that 
urged Goodyear to even greater effort. One 
day he was forced to pawn his iimbrella to 
the ferryman in order to pay his fare across the 
river to New York. ' ' I 'm used to facing what 
comes in the way of weather/' he remarked 
cheerily. He even smiled when he took his 
most precious keepsakes to the pawnshop. 

^ ' I never doubted, ' ' he once said, ' ' that I was 
the one chosen to do a needed work, and I could 
not turn back. So how could I doubt that I 
must one day reach the goalT' 

The days were not long enough for his work ; 
he carried on his experiments far into the 
night. Never was there a man more single- 
minded in his devotion to a cause. In order to 
test the qualities of his products he even went 
about dressed in rubber. 

People called him a crank. *^If you meet a 
man who has on an India-rubber cap, stock, coat, 
vest, and shoes, with an India rubber money 
purse without a cent of money in it, it is he,'' 
a man once said when he was asked to point 
out Mr. Goodyear. 

In those days, when anybody wanted to say 
124 



CHARLES GOODYEAR 

that an investment was worthless, he didn^t 
say, ^'It 's a wildcat scheme,'' or ^^ Something 
will soon prick that bubble"; he said ^^It 's an 
India-rubber venture ! ' ' And if you could have 
seen the deserted rubber factories bearing dis- 
mal witness to wrecked fortunes you might have 
understood. 

To the abandoned plant of the Eagle Rubber 
Company, Goodyear went. Perhaps he might 
persuade some one to set the wheels moving 
again when he brought the result of his experi- 
ments to the business. But no one could be in- 
duced *Ho send any more good money after 
bad. ' ' The pilgrimage was not, however, fruit- 
less ; for he found there a Nathaniel Hayward, 
at one time foreman of the works, who was mak- 
ing a few rubber articles for sale in a small 
way. Goodyear was at once interested in the 
process of ^'curing" the rubber that Hayward 
employed. He mixed the gum elastic with sul- 
phur and then gave it a sun-bath with good re- 
sult. 

^^I was told in a dream that sun and sulphur 
would do the work," he declared. **The plan 
works and I 've taken out a patent." 

125 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

''If I could patent a few of my dreams, I 
should not be afraid of want/' said Goodyear 
smiling, ''but I will agree to pay you for yours 
when I put on sale some goods made in the sun 
and sulphur way." 

This was the first step toward vulcanization. 
The process worked well for goods that had only 
a thin surface to be treated; but, as Goodyear 
learned to his sorrow, the dream patent didn't 
go deep enough. Once more he went ahead 
confidently to meet success. Once more Fortune 
turned her wheel, and he found himself again in 
the depths of want,— but not of despair. There 
was one more vital lesson to be learned and 
necessity pitilessly urged him on. 

He took a contract from the Government ^o 
supply mail-bags of the new material. They 
were beautifully formed and colored cleverly to 
imitate leather. What a good advertisement 
they would prove ! Surely his fortune and that 
of the despised rubber goods would now be es- 
tablished on a firm foundation ! The bags were 
put on exhibition and much admired. But alas ! 
they could not hold their own against the heat 

126 



CHAELES GOODYEAR 

of summer. Goodyear saw that the battle was 
not yet won. 

^ ' How can you still keep on with that forlorn 
hope?" people asked. *'It is madness to per- 
sist further in the face of the needs of your fam- 
ily. Go back to the hardware business and the 
work of making a decent living. ' ' 

^^I have more than hope," replied Goodyear. 
* ' I have faith that my work is not in vain. The 
long road must have an ending; and rest and 
reward belongs to the one who presses on to 
the end. It is clear that the world needs rubber ; 
my w^ork must meet that need. ' ' 

The story of the hardships Goodyear endured 
is one of the saddest that can be imagined, and 
yet this knight-errant of invention was not sad, 
because he never doubted that good would re- 
sult, and for its sake he was willing to meet 
whatever came. It was as if he said to good 
fortune and to ill, '^ There is something in the 
spirit of man that your favors cannot bribe or 
your frowns betray!" 

Then one evening, when he was sitting with 
his family in the kitchen, trying the effect of 
heat on the rubber which he had mixed with sul- 

127 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

phur, he threw out his hand to add emphasis to 
a remark and suddenly brought his specimen in 
contact with the red-hot stove. And something 
amazing happened! In a moment he had for- 
gotten what he was saying, forgotten where he 
was and those about him. It was as if he were 
alone in the world with that little piece of rub- 
ber, which instead of melting had strangely 
hardened. The stickiness was quite gone. How 
utterly astounding, when the one sure thing had 
seemed to be that a high temperature would melt 
rubber ! Was it possible that this was true only 
up to a certain degree, and that an intense heat 
would cure the trouble that less heat caused? 

His daughter in describing this great moment 
said, ^^As I was passing in and out of the room, 
I casually observed the little piece of gum which 
he was holding near the fire, and I noticed that 
he was unusually animated by some discovery 
which he had made. He nailed the piece of gum 
outside the kitchen door in the intense cold. In 
the morning he brought it in, holding it up ex- 
ultingly. He had found it perfectly flexible, as 
it was when he put it out. This was proof 
enough of the value of his discovery." 

128 



CHARLES GOODYEAR 

The discovery came early in the year 1839. 
Patiently the inventor set to work with new 
tests to try the effect of acids as well as of 
varying degrees of heat and cold on his new sub- 
stance. The exact temperature which gave the 
best result must also be carefully determined. 
He worked on in the face of the blank indiffer- 
ence and unbelief of all about him, who could 
not conceive of any good coming from this 
rubber that had wrecked a good man's life and 
addled his brains. ' ' But as for me, ' ' said Good- 
year, ^'I felt myself amply repaid for the past, 
and quite indifferent as to the trials of the fu- 
ture..'' 

For he knew that at last success had crowned 
his efforts and that through his labors a new 
gift had been won for mankind, — the fifth neces- 
sity of life, it is sometimes called to-day. The 
new process was called vulcanization, for it 
seemed that the spirit of Vulcan's forge was 
indeed at work in the magic change. 

The greater part of the money which his 
patent brought him was used in making experi- 
ments. 

*^ Why bother to test novelties when there are 
129 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

things tried and proved that yield profits T ' he 
was asked. 

'*If I had been working first and last for prof- 
its, I should never have made my discovery," 
said Goodyear. ^^ Money is indispensable for 
the perfecting of improvements, but it is trial 
and necessity that bring hidden things to light. 
As I pushed on through the days of want to my 
invention, so I shall continue through the days 
of plenty to put it to the test in different ways." 

Mr. Parton in his sketch of the inventor says : His friends 
smiled at his zeal or reproached him for it. 

It has only been since the mighty growth of the business 
that they have acknowledged that he was right, and that 
they were wrong. They remember him, sick and wasted, 
now coming to them with a walking-stick of India rubber, 
exulting in the new application of his material, and pre- 
dicting its general use, while they objected that it had cost 
him fifty dollars ; now shutting himself up for months trying 
to make a sail of rubber fabric, impervious to water, that 
should never freeze, and to which no sleet or ice should 
ever cling. There is nothing in the history of invention 
more remarkable than the devotion of this man to his 
object. 

So to the last through the week-day of a life of 
struggle, Charles Goodyear devoted himself to 
his cause. On Sunday morning, July 1, 1860, 

130 



CHAELES GOODYEAR 

when the bells were ringing for church, this 
loyal soldier and servant laid aside his armor 
and entered upon the reward of his labors. 

''His greatest glory," said his son, William 
H. Goodyear, Curator of Fine Arts at the 
Brooklyn Museum, ''is not that he discovered 
vulcanization, but that, having discovered it, 
he scorned the wealth which the discovery 
created, except in so far as it helped him in 
the nobler task of continuing to create new in- 
dustries." 



131 



LIGHT-BEINGEES 



"Who is there to take up my duties?" asked the setting sun. 
"I shall do what I can, my Master/' said the earthen lamp. 



God loves man's lamps better than his own great stars. 

Rabindranath Tagore. 



LIGHT-BRINGERS 

THE Greeks said that when Prometheus 
gave man the gift of fire he called down 
upon himself the fearful wrath of Jupiter be- 
cause now the children of earth might become 
too powerful and lift up their eyes boldly to 
the high places of the gods. It is true that when 
man learned to summon a spark to do his bid- 
ding he had won the ^^open sesame" of all prog- 
ress. He could now cook his food, warm and 
light his dwelling, forge weapons, and fashion 
tools. 

It is, however, as easy for us to take for 
granted all the great gifts that we owe to fire 
as it is to strike a match. Think of the skill 
and labor once required to do the task that one 
little splinter tipped with phosphorus can ac- 
complish at a stroke. We know that the making 
of a new flame was fraught with such difficulty 
that early peoples were at great pains to keep 

135 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

their fires from dying out. The watchful care 
of fire even became a religious duty. 

The familiar rhyme about the *^good old 
times'' that Washington knew reminds us that 
the gifts of fire are but newly won : 

When Washington was President 

He saw full many an icicle ; 
But never on a railroad went 

And never rode a bicycle. 

His trousers ended at the knees; 

By wire he could not send dispatch; 
He filled his lamp with whale-oil grease 

And never had a match to scratch. 

Second only in importance to the gift of fire 
itself, was the discovery of the ^' black dia- 
monds ' ' stored within the earth to serve as fuel. 
How precious this treasure of coal is to a people 
is shown by the events of the World War, when 
Germany risked everything to wrest from 
France her strip of mine lands. Italy has been 
handicapped because she has no coal to feed her 
machines and the engines of her railroads and 
steamships. Fuel is costly when it must be 
bought in other lands and brought from afar. 

136 



LIGHT-BRINOERS 

The country that is rich in coal has the way to 
wealth and power. 

As the means of heating our houses has made 
us independent of the rigors of winter, so 
better ways of lighting have lengthened our 
days by taking away some of the hours of the 
night. In olden days a curfew bell was rung 
at eight o 'clock to bid the people cover their fires 
and remain indoors. (The word curfew is made 
from two French words couvrir and feu that 
mean cover fire.) Prudent persons would not 
be about after that hour when danger of many 
kinds lurked in the dark streets lighted only 
by torches and lanterns. 

Even as recently as the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century, the streets of great cities like 
London and Paris were at the mercy of masked 
ruffians who took advantage of the darkness 
that surrounded the feeble oil lamps to attack 
helpless wayfarers. The torch-bearers or link- 
boys whose business it was to accompany 
coaches were often in the pay of thieves or reck- 
less intoxicated young bloods who found in the 
distress and panic of belated travelers a rare 
sport. 

137 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

The darkness tliat tempted rogues made cow- 
ards of all but the bravest; and the poor old 
watchmen with their swinging lanterns were 
deaf to cries for help. To-day our gas and elec- 
tric lights are the most effective guardians of 
our streets. Civilization flourishes in the light. 

The conquest of darkness, from the time when 
savage men brought out a spark from flint and 
iron to the time when Edison learned to compel 
the electric current to serve our needs, is a 
strange and fascinating story. 



138 



A FINDER OF BURIED TREASURE 

William Muedock (1754-1839) 

SOME day, when you visit the land of Scott 
and Burns, make a little journey apart 
from the places starred in your guide-book to 
Bellomill near Old Cumnock, Ayrshire, where 
the swift Bello stream joins the blithe gnrgling 
waters of Lugar. There behind the remains of 
the .old mill is a playhouse with a story. Dug 
out of the rock is a room four or five yards long 
and as many wide where William Murdock — or 
Murdoch, as his name was spelled then — used 
to play with his brothers. 

^ ' The child is father of the man, ' ' we are told ; 
and the lads who hollowed out that place in the 
stony bank for their boyish fun were already 
playing in a fashion that was to bear real fruit 
in the grown-up years. There was a fireplace 
in that play-room with a vent constructed so 

139 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

as to carry the smoke and fumes along the gar- 
den to mingle with those from the kitchen of 
Bello-mill House. And near that fireplace was 
a pan that held big pieces of the slaty, splint 
coal — *^ parrot'' coal, the boys called it — which 
could always be depended on to give out a beau- 
tiful light. William soon discovered that the 
flames, which lighted up their cave so delight- 
fully when the boys told stories of pirates and 
buried treasure, came from a gas that the coal 
breathed out as it burned. 

**What if one could find some way of drawing 
that gas out of the coal and sending it through 
pipes to lamps in people's houses? It might be 
even better than oil as a light," he thought. 
And William Murdock little dreamed that in 
that moment he had stumbled on the secret of a 
treasure buried for ages in the earth which it 
was to be his fortune to find and bring to light 
for the use of man. There was almost a tempest 
in a teapot when William borrowed a little old 
kettle of his mother's in which to try an early 
experiment in gas-making. For in the Bello- 
mill play-house William Murdock made his first 

140 



WILLIAM MUEDOCK 

attempts to call out from his ** parrot'' coal the 
gas that burned with the bright light. 

William 's brothers could not understand why 
the coal flares interested him so much. They 
were much more delighted with his wonderful 
wooden horse on which they could all ride to 
school. This wooden horse was, by the way, a 
famous invention. It had something of the 
nature of the contrivance that we know to-day 
as a tricycle, and there was also something about 
it that tried hard to give a hint of the loco- 
motive. 

It was not a matter of great surprise to the 
neighbors that William should have a fondness 
for tools and mechanical devices. * ^ He 's a regu- 
lar chip o' the auld block!" they used to say. 
For John Murdock, his father, was not only a 
farmer and millwright but also a man of many 
^^ bonny'' inventions in the use of wood and 
metals; and one of them at least — his toothed 
circular iron-gearing — ^was famous at that time 
in the only large engineering-plant in Scotland, 
the Carron Ironworks. 

So, while it seemed only natural that young 
William should have a turn for tinkering about 

141 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

with his father's tools, it was something more 
amazing when he showed that he could do more 
than make curiosities and gimcracks. When he 
was still in his teens he worked off some of his 
energy and inventiveness by constructing a 
stone bridge over Nith Creek that was not only 
strong and cleverly built but also really pic- 
turesque. 

^^Weel, a brig maun look as if it graws out o' 
the banks and had a true hame 'mongst the 
burns an' braes where it finds itseP," the boy 
said when they told him that his handiwork 
was a ^ ' fine braw, bit o ' building. ' ' 

Young Murdock showed his inventive turn by 
making an oval turning lathe. Then, wearing 
a wooden hat turned out by his ''lathey,'' he 
set out to seek his fortune. He knew something 
of the iron-works where his father 's gearing had 
been made, and through that something about 
James Watt who had been carrying out experi- 
ments there with his newly patented steam-en- 
gine. But alas, the Carron Ironworks failed 
before William Murdock could knock at this 
door to opportunity. 

Nothing daunted, however, by the prospect 
142 



WILLIAM MUEDOCK 

of a tramp to Birmingliam (which was in those 
days a week's journey by stage-coach), he de- 
termined to find a place in that new world of 
engineering ventures, where Watt, now as- 
sociated with Matthew Boulton, was making 
his steam-engines at the Soho works. 

Can you picture the hardy Scot as he pre- 
sented himself in his home-turned hat? It was 
the unique head gear that first caught Boulton 's 
eye. ^ ^ That is a queer cap you have. Of what 
is it made V' he demanded. 

i i Timmer, ' ' stammered the young man, in his 
broad Scotch fashion. 

^*0f ivood, do you say! How was it madeT' 

^'I turned it myseP on a bit lathey o' my own 
making, ' ' was the reply. 

Boulton saw at once that here was a man of 
uncommon mechanical skill. Moreover, some- 
thing out of the common in the face under the 
remarkable hat held his attention. Then the 
master of the iron-works, who prided himself 
on being a judge of men, said: '^ There is no 
place open here now^, as I told you at the outset ; 
but, if I mistake not, you're a man who can 
make a place for yourself — and fill it!'' 

143 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

So William Murdock found the employment 
he sought, and before many months he had be- 
come *^the right hand man" of the firm of Bonl- 
ton and Watt. Andrew Carnegie in his "Life 
of James Watf tells the following anecdote in 
commenting upon Mnrdock^s success: 

His history is the usual march upward until he became 
his employers' most trusted manag-er in all their mechanical 
operations. While engaged upon one critical job, where the 
engine had defied previous attempts to put it to rights, the 
people in the house where Murdoch lodged were awakened 
one night by heavy tramping in his room overhead. Upon 
entering, Murdoch was seen in his bed clothes heaving 
away at his bed post in his sleep, calling out "Now she 
goes, lads, now she goes." His heart was in his work. He 
had a mission, and only one — to make that engine go. 

Murdock ^s employers had serious difSculty in 
getting their products installed in mines, ijar- 
ticularly those in Cornwall where there were 
some very bitter and persistent rivals in the 
field. "Let William be sent to handle that mat- 
ter," said Watt when a situation arose requir- 
ing skill in human engineering as well as me- 
chanical readiness. 

Young Murdock was at this time twenty-five 
years of age. **I well remember hearing my 

144 



WILLIAM MUEDOCK 

father speak of his coming to Cornwall," said 
an old Cornish doctor. *^He was tall, and as 
strong of back and arm as of head. They say he 
conld prove his point by giving a drubbing to an 
ngly customer of a workman who was spoiling 
for a fight when the need arose. Once they tried 
to get rid of the Watt engines in the mines by 
foul play. Nobody could tell why a certain 
newly set up engine wouldn't work. Then at 
last Murdock went and looked her over from 
stem to stern. There, just as he suspected, 
something was queered ; a bolt had been slipped 
out of its proper place. ^ Try her now, ' he cried, 
and everybody stood around and saw the engine 
go — as well as the imderhand trick that had 
made the trouble. James Watt had a real cap- 
tain of men as well as of steam engines in Mur- 
dock, and he knew it." 

The letters of the inventor of the steam-en- 
gine give repeated proof of the dependence he 
put in Murdock, who through many years had 
as his chief reward the knowledge that he was 
able to render services that none other could. 
For years his salary was only twenty shillings 
a week. But money was never an end with 

145 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

Murdock, to whom first and last tlie work 
done was tlie thing that counted. In 1780, when 
Bonze, one of the chief rivals of the Watt and 
Boulton firm, offered to take Mnrdock into part- 
nership, he met with an uncompromising no. 
He had left his Scotland, he said, and was spend- 
ing his days in English foundries and mines in 
order to become associated with Watt, and he 
was a man who knew how to steer a straight 
course. 

In the years when Murdock was making in 
Watt's interests frequent trips from one min- 
ing-district to another, he sometimes thought 
whimsically of the wooden horse of his school- 
days. And one evening when he sat down to 
supper with some nineteen miles in the muscles 
of his weary legs, he wondered if a steam-engine 
might not be made to serve as motive power 
for some such contrivance. 

With Murdock to think was to act, — to try 
and test. In the years between 1781 and 1783 
he spent most of his evening hours in con- 
structing a ^ locomotive steam engine, some- 
what like a tricycle, 19 inches long and 14 inches 
high, with a copper boiler with fire-box and flue, 

146 



WILLIAM MUEDOCK 

a spirit lamp, and one double-acting cylinder, 
two driving wheels and a steering wheel. ^ ' This 
curious model was later given a place of honor 
in the Birmingham Art Museum, for it was the 




Murdoek's Model of Locomotive 

very earliest locomotive, the forerunner of the 
mighty road-devouring iron horses of to-day. 

Visitors to Redruth, Cornwall, may read on a 
tablet placed in the wall of a modest house in 
Cross Street the following inscription: 

147 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

WILLIAM MURDOCH 

Lived in this house, 

1782—1798 

Made the first locomotive here, 

and tested it in 1784. 

Invented Gas-Lighting 

and used it in this house in 

1792. 

A humorous story is told oi Murdock's early 
experiences with his locomotive. Alexander 
Murdoch says in his sketch of the inventor : 

Murdoch made frequent satisfactory trials of his loco- 
motive in his own house, as is testified by many persons 
who saw it, and the story of the first trial in the open air 
will bear repetition. It was on a dark night, early in the 
year 1784, and the road chosen was a lonely lane bordered 
with high hedgerows, leading to the parish church and 
rectory. The boiler was filled, the lamp was lighted; soon 
the steam got up, and off went the engine, puffing and 
snorting at the rate of 6 or 8 miles an hour. It soon outran 
the inventor, and then the night air was rent by a suc- 
cession of frightened cries for help. Murdoch, hurrjing up, 
found the worthy rector, who, hearing a puffing and snort- 
ing, and seeing only a fiery eye rushing along not much 
above the level of the ground, believed he had encountered 
the Evil One in person. 

That evening Murdock knew that his queer 
steam-driven devil was going to arrive some- 
where. He went on with enthusiasm working 

148 



WILLIAM MIIRDOCK 

out his idea despite the discouragement of 
Watt, who said: "You are hunting shadows, 
William, when you dream that such an engine 
as pumps out the water from mines can move 
itself about on wheels. That would mean a 
miracle. ' ' 

'^Then I \e seen miracles worked already," 
Murdock replied; ''and I expect to live to see 
more of them. '^ 

The day came when he rode about on his 
rounds from mine to mine as Watt's represen- 
tative in a puffing rattling steam-carriage, 
which was before long lighted with gas of his 
own manufacture. Watt, however, still strong- 
ly objected to Murdoch's perfecting and patent- 
ing his locomotive. He felt it was his right to 
reserve for himself the chance to make any and 
all possible developments of the steam-engine. 
In effect he said to his assistant: ''I cannot 
consent to your expending good time and mate- 
rial in such a vain cause. Stick to your job of 
building and introducing our tried and proved 
working engines. If there were any chance of 
this steam carriage becoming a practical success 
I should myself follow it up and develop it." 

149 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

Murdock was too loyal to accuse his chief 
even in thought of a dog-in-the-manger spirit; 
but later events have made it clear that but 
for Watt's opposition the locomotive would have 
been given to the world full forty years before 
the time of Stephenson. 

Was it perhaps one evening when he was try- 
ing to console himself for his disappointment in 
regard to the steam-carriage that Murdock drew 
in with the soothing smoke from his pipe a new 
inspiration? As he looked into the burning 
coals on the grate, an old idea flared up, flick- 
ered, and then all at once burst into bloom. He 
saw the gas sputtering into flame as it came 
from the coal and recalled his boyish experi- 
ments when he had succeeded in capturing this 
gas in an old teapot. Stooping, he put a piece 
of the coal in the bowl of his pipe, which he 
closed ; then he set fire to the gas that began to 
escape from the stem. 

*^Weel, now,'' said William Murdock, ''if ye 
dinna think a new thing is possible, put that in 
your pipe an' smoke it!" 

It seemed as if he saw in a flash the coming 
of a new light for man and all that it might 

150 



WILLIAM MUEDOCK 

mean through the miniature gas-plant which he 
held in his hand. A place to draw the gas from 
the coal — he tapped the bowl of his pipe — and 
tubes or pipes to carry it to the place to be 
lighted — he looked triumphantly at the stem 
from which the gas was still creeping. He be- 
gan now in earnest his experiments in making 
and conveying gas. 

The news soon went abroad that queer, un- 
canny things were taking place in the Murdock 
house. One evening a group of the more daring 
youngsters of the neighborhood were taking 
turns peering through the window and report- 
ing what they thought of the mysteries within, 
when Murdock suddenly appeared and calling 
to one lad sent him to a shop to buy a thimble. 
Was there to be a game of **hunt the thimble'' 
in the shadows among all the pots and kettles 
in that place of strange sigjhts and smells! 
Well, when people were queer there was no 
telling what the next fancy would be! Young 
Jack showed that he could run and he was back 
at the door with the thimble in less than ^ve 
minutes ; but having some difficulty in pulling it 
from his pocket, he succeeded in edging his way 

151 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

into the work-room before he handed it over. 
And the door closed with Jack inside ! 

What a story he would have to tell to the 
fellows out there! There was a kettle full of 
coal and a big metal container like those used in 
blasting. But what was Mr. Murdock doing 
with the thimble! He punched a number of 
holes through the top and then fitted it like a cap 
over a tube which he fastened to the metal case. 
Then he set fire to the end of the thimble ! 

^^And it burned, man, it burned fine," Jack 
reported ; ^ ^but it smelled horrid. You can even 
smell it out here, but not so much, of course, as 
in the house," he added to console the boys who 
had not been so fortunate as himself in really 
seeing the exciting experiment in gas-making. 

Murdock carried on many experiments after 
that, and in 1792, succeeded in making a supply 
of gas in an iron retort at the rear of his house 
to which it was carried through pipes. Besides 
lighting his home and office, he made a gas lamp 
that could be carried in his locomotive, storing 
the gas in a tank with a nozzle attached, and 
another portable lamp where a tube was con- 
nected with a sort of bladder filled with gas. 

152 



WILLIAM MIIRDOCK 

In 1798, when Murdock's services to the firm 
of Bonlton and Watt were at last recognized by 
the promotion to both the name and the salary 




Murdock'a Gas Generator 



of Manager of the practical department, he 
lighted the Soho works with gas which he had 
now succeeded in purifying so that the objec- 

153 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

tionable smell was removed while the brightness 
of the light was increased. 

It is amusing to note the difficulties encount- 
ered in bringing gas-lighting into general use 
even after the great industrial plants like the 
Soho works at Birmingham, and the largest cot- 
ton manufactory of Manchester had demon- 
strated its immense advantages. 

^'Do you mean to tell us it is possible to have 
a light without a wick!" exclaimed a member 
of Parliament when a bill was introduced in 
1809 to grant a charter to a gas-light company. 

Sir Walter Scott made fun of the notion of 
^ ' lighting London by smoke ' ' and * ^ even carry- 
ing the light below the streets in pipes." But 
he lived to see his own home, Abbotsf ord, lighted 
by gas. 

''We '11 have to turn over the dome of St. 
Paul's for a gas-holder for London!" declared 
Sir Humphry Davy, the inventor of the safety 
lamp, with a merry twinkle. 

''I ken it '11 take something bigger than St. 
Paul's," replied Murdock gravely. 

Perhaps our slang use of ''gas" for boastful 
and putfed-up speech originated at this time, 

154 



WILLIAM MUEDOCK 

when the following nonsense verse was often 
copied and repeated in Scotland as well as in 
England : 

We thankful are that sun and moon 

Were placed so very high 
That no tempestuous hand might reach 

To tear them from the sky. 
Were it not so, we soon should find 

That some reforming ass 
Would straight propose to snuff them out, 

And light the world with Gas. 

When the day came that the House of Com- 
mons was lighted by gas, the architect exacted 
that the pipes be kept at least four inches from 
the walls to avert fire ; for it was thought that 
the illuminant passed along in the form of red- 
hot vapor. Other people declared that this 
strange thing must be a menace to health, that 
it would cause eye troubles, asthma, consump- 
tion, and many other dire diseases. 

Perhaps, however, the most extraordinary 
complaint against the *^new light'' was that it 
would drive out the whale-oil industry, and so 
mean the destruction of the British Navy, since 
the whaling-ships gave the best training for 
sailors. 

155 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

One of the many disappointments in the his- 
tory of invention is the lack of proper recog- 
nition of Mnrdock's work. His name should be 
as nniversally known as is Watt's when we 
speak of the steam-engine or Edison's in con- 
nection with the electric light. "Why is it that 
only a few realize what the world owes to this 
great and rarely unselfish man! The answer 
lies partly in the circumstance which kept him 
always in the shadow of Watt as loyal and de- 
voted * ^ right hand man. ' ' And the master was 
too absorbed in the problems growing out of 
his own concerns to add to his vital interests any 
thought for the independent claims of his trusty 
lieutenant. 

So Murdock's means and method of making 
gas were not even patented, while men who later 
devised special burners, meters, and other de- 
tails connected with his invention reaped for- 
tunes. 

^'Thou wert an ignoramus, old Murdock!" 
exclaims one biographer. *^Why didst thou 
not puff thyself? Thinkest thou if Sir A. or Sir 
B. had invented the gas-light we should ever 
have heard the last of it?" 

156 



WILLIAM MUEDOOK 

William Murdock lived to the ripe old age of 
eighty-five. For many years lie served in the 
firm of Boulton, Watt & Company as partner, 
guide, and friend of the junior Bonlton and 
Watt whom he loved as sons. 

Several memorials have been tardily raised 
to bear witness to the services of this *^ grand 
old man. '' But perhaps the most interesting of 
them, the one most in keeping with the spirit 
and history of William Murdock, is the one that 
a master stone-mason, who as a boy had seen 
the inventor when he returned on visits to his 
native town, erected on his own initiative in 
Auchinleck Churchyard. We read there this 
inscription : 

To the Memory of William Murdoch, bom in Bellowmill, 
in this Parish, in 1754 ; died at Handsworth in 1839. 
Like many of his countrymen in England he rose to 
eminence by the native force of his character, and benefited 
his own and other ages by his discoveries in gas, and by his 
mechanical inventions as the associate of Watt and Boulton. 



157 



THE FEANKLIN OF OUR TIMES 

Thomas Alva Edison (1847- ) 

A MAN who could see through the outer 
shell of things and read something of 
their meaning has called Edison ''The Franklin 
of the Nineteenth Century." But the crowd 
made a marvel of his inventions as if he had 
the magician's wand or secret spell and insisted 
on calling him the ''Wizard of Menlo Parf 
even after his plant had been transferred to 
West Orange. The Wizard is, however, glad 
that he has two deaf ears to turn to praise of 
this sort. 

"There are many gains that more than bal- 
ance my loss of hearing," he says whimsically. 
"I can go about New York, for instance, seeing 
what I like and hearing little of the rush and 
roar. And I am not troubled by this foolish 
talk about my wizard tricks. I have always been 

158 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

ready to put things to the test and to learn 
from what happens. That and the will to work 
while others sleep are the only spells I know/' 

The really great men are always very simple. 
There is a homespun directness about those 
who care for the gold of achievement rather 
than the tinsel of appearance. And there is in- 
deed a striking parallel between Franklin, who 
with kite and key coaxed lightning from the 
clouds, and Edison, who has summoned that 
mighty power to do the bidding of man in many 
ways. 

The keynote of Franklin's character was 
thrift, — real thrift that means wise use of one 's 
gifts and opportunities. We see this not only 
in the sayings of Poor Eichard but also in the 
way he followed his own teaching throughout 
his most amazing career. For the man who be- 
gan as printer and became scientist, inventor, 
and statesman, was first and last the most use- 
ful citizen of his day. 

So with the Franklin of our own time. While 
we marvel at the range of his powers and the 
number of his accomplishments we find the ex- 
planation the same, — not magic but thrift. 

159 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

As a boy lie was called queer and stupid. 
Surely no child with all his wits would think 
that he could sit on goose-eggs as successfully as 
the mother goose and actually try it out. Other 
children often asked silly questions, but they 
didn't act the goose as he did! 

There never was such a boy for asking why. 
And if you couldn't meet his every why, then 
why not! The school in the little town of Port 
Huron, Ohio, where he sat at the foot of his 
class for three months didn't know what to 
make of a boy who could n't learn out of books 
as the others did, but was always asking some- 
thing that was n't in the lesson at all. 

His mother, however, knew that he wasn't 
stupid. She had once been a teacher, one of the 
wise sort who know life, as well as books. 
^^ Would n't you rather have a child who really 
thinks than one who says things parrot fashion 
every time you call his name!" she asked the 
boy's teacher, indignantly. She would teach 
her boy at home. He should not go to a school 
that called a boy a dunce and did everything 
to make him one by clipping the wings of his 

160 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

thought and imagination whenever he tried to 
use them. 

So '^AP' Edison was taught by his mother, 
and before he was twelve they had read several 
wise books together, — ^books that answered 
questions and gave one much to think about, 
such as Sear ^s * ^ History of the "World, ' ' and the 
Dictionary of Science. And the things young 
Al Edison learned seemed like windows opening 
out on new things to wonder about. 

He spent his pocket-money at the drug store, 
not for candy, but for chemicals to try some of 
the experiments he had read about. Soon there 
were in the cellar of the Edison house some 
two hundr jd bottles labeled *^ poison" to scare 
away the curious. 

Batteries and test-tubes and chemicals cost 
more than a small boy can command, even when, 
as was the case with Al Edison, he worked on a 
ten-acre truck farm and sold his peas, lettuce, 
and tomatoes, from door to door through the 
town. Besides, hoeing corn in July was hot 
work, especially when one longed to be down in 
the cellar with his precious bottles. 

'*"Why not let me sell papers on the train to 
161 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

Detroit r' asked the enterprising lad one day. 
^'I see my way to do quite a business and I 
could spend some hours every day at the public 
library. ' ' 

Of course that appealed to his mother. He 
carried his point and did indeed build up a 
flourishing business. While selling newspapers, 
magazines, and candy on the train, he won per- 
mission from the conductor to use an empty 
compartment of the mail-car to carry baskets of 
vegetables and fruit back to Port Huron 
where he opened a little store with one of his 
boy friends as clerk. 

Nor did he have to be parted from his labora- 
tory while on the road. The baggage-car would 
hold more than his stock of newspapers and a 
fresh supply of produce for his store. Soon he 
transferred to it his stock of jars and bottles 
which had increased greatly because he was now 
prosperous enough to buy many new and fasci- 
nating articles. 

But, alas ! the course of young ambition does 
not always run smooth, even on an express- 
train where one has been allowed to have every- 
thing his own way for a time. There came one 

162 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

day a sudden jolt that threw a stick of phos- 
phorus out of its place to the floor of the car 
laboratory, where it burst into flame and set the 
car on fire. 

The conductor rushed water to the scene and 
put out the fire, but his wrath still blazed, and 
as the train came to a stop for a station he flung 
the unlucky experimenter from his traveling 
workshop with all his precious possessions in a 
sorry heap, giving the culprit at the same time 
such a sounding cuff over the ears that they 
never recovered from the shock. The inven- 
tor's deafness dates from that day. 

^' Spilt milk doesn't interest me," said Edi- 
son years afterward. '^I have spilt lots of it 
and while I have always felt it for a few days, 
it is quickly forgotten and I look ahead to the 
future.'' 

The next day the boy, with his father's per- 
mission, set up his workshop in a spare room 
of the Port Huron home, and he passed through 
the cars of the train to Detroit with his pile of 
newspapers and candies as if nothing had hap- 
pened. It was not in him to harbor a grudge 
against the conductor, whose first duty was to 

163 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

guard the lives and property in his care. Nor 
did he cry out against his own hard luck, even 
though not only his chemical outfit but also his 
cherished printing-apparatus had been sadly 
wrecked. For, besides experimenting with 
gases and batteries, the young ^ ' candy-butcher ' ' 
had actually set up a practical printing-office in 
the mail-car compartment that he had come to 
look upon as his own. There he had printed the 
^^ Weekly Herald,'' of which he was reporter, 
editor, business manager, type-setter, and all 
the rest; and, taking advantage of the eager 
demand for news during the feverish years of 
the Civil War, he had sold as many copies of his 
enterprising sheet as he could turn out. 

Now in his home workshop he set up another 
newspaper — ^^^Paul Pry,'' he called it — that was 
to satisfy the demand for items of local interest. 
These publishing-ventures showed young Edi- 
son's native shrewdness and gave scope for his 
initiative and imagination during the months 
when he was eagerly devouring the contents of 
the Detroit Public Library, shelf by shelf. But 
perhaps the greatest good for the future that 
came out of this chapter of his boyhood was the 

164 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

interest he developed in the telegraph and 
through it in electricity. 

He had learned the advantage of sending 
news by wire when getting items for his paper. 
He had also had the enterprise to send ahead to 
way-stations bulletins of important war news, 
in order to create a demand for his sheets when 
the train arrived. 

^^My chum and I used to hang around tele- 
graph offices/' said Edison, and we rigged up a 
line between our homes of stovepipe wire with 
bottles as insulators, set on nails driven into 
trees and short poles. ' ' 

Fate, having prepared the young actor for 
the next act of his life drama, set the stage for 
a ^ ^popular hero'' scene. The train-boy was 
waiting at a station while freight-cars were 
being shifted about, when he saw that the small 
son of the station agent was in the middle of a 
track on which a train was rapidly approach- 
ing. Down went papers and packages as the lad 
flung himself at the child and swept him out 
of the path of the locomotive with not an instant 
to spare. 

^ ' Good boy, brave boy ! ' ' repeated the tearful 
165 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

father as lie wrung the hero's hand, cut and 
scratched as it was by the stones on which he 
had fallen by the track. "What can I do for 
you? I know,'' he said, in a burst of inspira- 
tion, "you would like, maybe, to learn to be a 
train operator. Well, I '11 teach you all I know 
of the business." 

It is easy enough to find time for what one 
really wants to do, even in the crowded life of 
such a man of business as young Edison. A 
boy was found to fill in on the train for part of 
the run, reserving for Al the section of the route 
between his home and the station where his 
grateful telegrapher worked. He had already 
mastered the Morse alphabet; what he had 
chiefly to learn was the abbreviated code em- 
ployed in railway work to save time. Some of 
the figures used in this way have become gen- 
erally known, such as 23^ which stood for ac- 
cident or death and was regarded as a bad sign ; 
and 73^ which stood for congratulations and 
good wishes. 

Then after several months of study and prac- 
tice Edison fell heir to the position of telegraph 
operator at Port Huron. He was at this time 

16G 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

sixteen years old and as bnsy asking questions 
— chiefly now of the scientific books and the op- 
portunities for experiment that came his way — 
as he had been as a child when his insistent wJi^ 
and again why to all about him used to wear out 
the patience of every one except his mother. 

He tried to get the men who worked with elec- 
tricity to explain something of its what and 
why. 

' * The telegraph men could n 't explain how it 
worked/' he said afterward, ^'I remember the 
best explanation I got was from an old Scotch 
line repairer who said that if you had a dog like 
a dachshund long enough to reach from Edin- 
burgh to London, and if you pulled his tail in 
Edinburgh he would bark in London. I under- 
stood that, but I couldn't grasp what went 
through the dog or over the wire. ' ' 

And to-day Edison says he is no nearer the 
answer to the question of what this electricity 
is with which he works than he was at that time. 

The next years of Edison's life as a telegraph 
operator gave him a varied experience in 
many places and led him to confine his study 
and experiments to electrical problems. The 

167 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

possibilities of electricity became the concern 
of bis working-bonrs. ^^Cbemical experiments 
wbicb bad been my first love took on tbe nature 
of boliday excursions, ' ' be bas said. 

At tbis time be developed an instantaneous 
vote-recording machine designed to save Con- 
gress tbe time of roll-calls. It was an entire 
success ; its only fault was that it was too per- 
fect for imperfect human beings. The chairman 
of the congressional committee to whom Edison 
exhibited bis model said solemnly: ^^ Young 
man, if there is any invention on earth that we 
don't want at the Capitol, it is tbis. One of the 
greatest weapons in the bands of a minority to 
prevent bad legislation and gain time for 
further consideration is tbe roll-call. ' ' 

Edison at once saw the truth of this and in- 
stead of blaming fate for having led him off on 
a false trail he said: ''That first invention 
taught me a valuable lesson, for I determined 
from then on to canvass the need or the demand 
before setting out to produce a supply of some- 
thing which might not be able to secure a foot- 
bold in tbe world.'' 

Tbe next years of many inventions, including 
168 



THOMAS AJuYA EDISON 

important devices in the perfecting of the tele- 
phone and the making of the first talking-ma- 
chine, gave Edison when he was still a yonng 
man of thirty a world-wide fame. Then he put 
aside his fascinating experiments with the 
phonograph to take np the problem of lighting. 
The brilliant arc-light was in general nse in 
lighthouses and along important thoroughfares 
in England and America. This light not only 
was too powerful and too costly, but it also re- 
quired too much attention for ordinary pur- 
poses. Everybody said, however, that it was the 

only practical electric light. In 1879 Profes- 
sor Tyndall, the leading British scientist, de- 
clared, ' ^ Though we have possessed the electric 
light for seventy years, it has been too costly 
to come into general use." 

This was a problem after Edison 's own heart. 
^ * Just wait a. while, ' ' he said, ^ ' and we will make 
electric light so cheap that only the wealthy 
can aiford to burn candles." 

He realized that the lighting of houses, stores, 
and other interiors was the need of the hour. 
So he devoted all his thought to the task of de- 

169 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

veloping a ligM of tlie size, cost, and conven- 
ience of the ordinary gas-jet. 

Experiments had been made with incandes- 
cent lights, for when it was discovered that the 
electric current heated the wire through which 
it passed, many electricians dreamed of finding 
a substance that could be raised to the point of 
incandescence or white heat without being con- 
sumed. In 1845 a young American inventor, J. 
"W. Starr, patented in England a lamp with a 
strip of carbon in the middle of a vacuum tube. 
He made for exhibition in America a splendid 
cluster of twenty-six of these lamps, one for 
every State in the Union at that time. He was 
confident that he had the light of the future. 
But, alas! on the voyage to America the bril- 
liant promise of the young inventor's life was 
extinguished. He died, at the age of twenty- 
five, and the practical development of his idea 
died with him. 

It was thought, however, that Starr had satis- 
factorily demonstrated that carbon was the most 
favorable material for the incandescent conduc- 
tor because it did not readily unite with oxygen 
(i.e., it could stand a high temperature for an 

170 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

appreciable time without being consumed) and 
also offered great resistance to the passage of 
the electric current, which meant that it might 
quickly be brought to the light-giving stage. 
But carbon, even in the best vacuum that could 
be devised, was burned out too soon to make the 
lamp a commercial success. A mechanism was 
arranged to supply new carbon sticks as fast as 
those in use were exhausted, but this made 
necessary globes that could be easily opened; 
and the lamps had also to be provided with a 
stop-cock arrangement for connection with air- 
pumps to restore the vacuum after each open- 
ing. Hence the incandescent lamps before Edi- 
son's time were great clumsy affairs and furn- 
ished light, without refilling, for only a few 
hours. 

**It can 'the done," said the leading scientists 
in America and England, when it was under- 
stood that Edison was determined to produce a 
practical electric light for houses. 

"I am free to admit,'' said Professor Tyndall, 
^'Edison has the power to grasp general facts 
and principles and then to work out from them 
some new practical combination before un- 

171 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

dreamed of. But as I know something of the 
difficulty of the electric-light problem, I should 
prefer seeing it in his hands to having it in 
mine." 

The undaunted Franklin-like temper of mind 
that would never allow a practical problem to 
remain unchallenged and unsolved was at work. 
The child who had flung a repeated ^'why?" or 
''how?" or ''how do you know!" at each easy- 
going answer that unthinking people gave to his 
questions was the father of the experimenter 
who was now working night and day to find the 
ideal substance for an incandescent lamp. 

Would platinum perhaps meet the need! 
Many tests were made before he was satisfied 
that the answer to the riddle was not tangled in 
the coil of a web-like thread of this grayish 
wire. And now carbon. If a delicate enough 
filament could be produced, might it not be en- 
closed in an air-tight tube and so be given life 
for a longer time than people had dreamed pos- 
sible 1 After many attempts, each leading to a 
failure which whetted his appetite for new ex- 
periments, he discovered that a delicate, hair- 
like thread of carbon seized and held the 

172 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

bright light of th^ electric current in a way that 
might well be called ^^ white magic.'' He had 
succeeded in sealing in a glass globe from which 
the air was exhausted a loop of carbonized cot- 
ton thread which glowed with a wonderful soft 
radiance. Upon this tiny thread hung the key 
to the problem of the world's light. That thread, 
like the one which Ariadne gave to her hero in 
the myth of the Slaying of the Minotaur, led 
Edison through a new labyrinth of endeavor. 
He was sure that there must be some substance 
even better than the cotton thread. That would 
do for a beginning, as a clue, but it pointed on to 
something that would give even more remark- 
able results. He tried carbonized paper, card- 
board, tissue-paper wrought into fairy-like fila- 
ments. Then various kinds of fibers from every 
imaginable substance, — flax, cocoanut hair, cel- 
luloid, and all sorts of wood, stems of plants and 
grasses. It was as if he were calling up for 
question all the growing things of earth. Noth- 
ing that came to hand was safe from experi- 
ment. 

One day he picked up a palm-leaf fan and tore 
off a strip from its bamboo edge. This was tried 

173 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

as hundreds of other things had been tried. A 
slender bamboo thread was carbonized and en- 
closed in a globe, and at last here was the better 
thing which he had sought. 

No sooner was Edison convinced that there 
was something about bamboo which seemed to 
make it the destined light-giver, than he de- 
termined to scour the lands that produced this 
wood to obtain the best varieties for his pur- 
pose. A messenger was despatched to China 
and Japan to collect as many specimens of 
bamboo as were to be found there. Hampers 
of samples were shipped to Edison's laboratory 
in New Jersey, where fibers from each were 
tested. In this game of survival of the fittest a 
certain Japanese variety won, and arrange- 
ments were made with an enterprising farmer 
of Nippon to ship a steady supply of the selected 
kind. 

But even now Edison was not satisfied. ' ' How 
do I know but that there is still in some spot of 
earth an even better substance, '^ he thought. 
And he went on with his search through other 
lands and the far islands of the sea. A hardy 
adventurer with the perseverance of the true 

174 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

scientist, Mr. Frank McGowan, wandered 
through the vast jungles of the Amazon in the 
cause. Then to Montevideo, up the Eiver de la 
Plata, through Argentine, Paraguay, and south- 
ern Brazil he went, fighting wild animals and 
Indians, encountering poisonous insects, rep- 
tiles, fever, hunger, and thirst. No hero of myth 
or legend in search of the Golden Fleece or the 
Enchanted Apples of the Hesperides, endured 
more than did the searcher for the wood fiber 
that should serve as the slave of the Edison 
lamp. 

And still the inventor went on with the quest ! 
One day Mr. James R. Ricalton, principal of a 
school in Maplewood, New Jersey, who had con- 
siderable reputation as a naturalist and travel- 
er, was asked by Edison if he were willing to 
carry on the search in the Orient. 

*^Are you in the mood for a vacation T' asked 
Mr. Edison, looking quizzically at the school- 
master. ^ ' I want a man to ransack all the tropi- 
cal jungles of the East, to find a better fiber for 
my lamp. I expect it to be found in the palm 
or bamboo family. How would you like the 
jobr^ 

175 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

*^It suits me/' was the prompt reply. 

'^Can you go to-morrow T' 

*^WeU, there are the little details of getting a 
leave of absence from my board of education 
and finding a substitute to take my place, ' ' said 
Mr. Eicalton. **How long shall I plan to be 
away?" 

^'How can I tell?" demanded Edison; ^^ per- 
haps six months ; perhaps six years. No matter 
how long it takes, find the right thing." 

The schoolmaster made his plans and then 
took a lesson from the Wizard in methods of try- 
ing out the specimens of bamboo which he 
should find. Let us quote from Mr. Ricalton's 
own account of his journey : 

It so happened that the day I set out fell on Washing- 
ton's birthday, and I suggested to my boys and girls at 
school that they make a line across the station platform 
near the school at Maplewood, and from this line I would 
start eastward around the world, and if good fortune should 
bring me back I would meet them from the westward at the 
same line. As I had often made them toe the scratch, for 
once they were only too well pleased to have me toe the 
line for them. 

This was done, and I sailed via England and the Suez 
Canal to Ceylon, that fair isle to which Sinbad the Sailor 
made his sixth voyage, picturesquely referred to in history 
as the brightest gem in the British Colonial Crown. I 

176 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

knew Ceylon to be eminently tropical; I knew it to be rich 
in many varieties of the bamboo family, which has been 
called the King of the Grasses ; and in this family I had most 
hope of finding the desired fiber. Weeks were spent in this 
paradisaical isle. Every part was visited. Native wood 
craftsmen were offered a premium on every new species 
brought in, and in this way nearly a hundred species were 
tested, a gTcater number than was found in any other 
country. One of the best specimens tested in the entire 
trip around the world was found first in Ceylon although 
later in Burmah. . . , 

From Ceylon I proceeded to India, then to Burmah, 
where the Giant Bamboo already mentioned is found also; 
but beside it no superior varieties were found. After com- 
pleting the tour of the Malay Peninsula I had planned to 
visit Java and Borneo; but having found in the Malay Pe- 
ninsula and in Ceylon a bamboo fiber which averaged a test 
from one to two hundred per cent better than that in use at 
the lamp factory, I decided it was unnecessary to visit these 
countries or New Guinea, as my "Eureka" had already 
been established, and that I would therefore set forth over 
the return to the western hemisphere, searching China and 
Japan on the way. The rivers in southern China brought 
down to Canton bamboos of many species, where this won- 
drously utilitarian reed enters very largely into the indus- 
trial life of the people, and not merely into the industrial 
life but even into the culinary arts, for bamboo sprouts are 
a universal vegetable in China; but among all the bamboos 
of China I found none of super-excellence in carbonizing 
qualities. Japan came next in the succession of countries 
to be explored, but there the work was much simplified, 
from the fact that the Tokio Museum contains a complete 
classified collection of all the different species in the Em- 
pire, and there samples could be obtained and tested. 

Now the last of the important bamboo-producing coun- 

177 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

tries in the globe circuit had been done and the home lap 
was in order; the broad Pacific was spanned in fourteen 
days; my natal continent in six; and on the 22nd of Feb- 
ruary, on the same day, at the same hour, at the same 
minute, one year to a second, "Little Maud,'^ a sweet maid 
of the school, led me across the line which completed the 
circuit of the globe, and where I was greeted with the 
cheers of my boys and girls. I at once reported to Mr. 
Edison, whose manner of greeting my return was as char- 
acteristic of the man as his summary and matter-of-fact 
manner of my dispatch. His little catechism of curious 
inquiry was embraced in four small words — with his usual 
pleasant smile he extended his hand and said: "Did you 
get it?" This was surely a summing up of a year's ex- 
ploration not less laconic than Csesar's review of his Gallic 
campaign. When I replied that I had, but that he must 
be the final judge of what I had found, he said that during 
my absence he had succeeded in making an artificial car- 
bon which was meeting the requirements satisfactorily; so 
well, indeed, that I believe no practical use was ever made 
of the bamboo fibers thereafter.* 

It migM be asked, Did Edison regret the 
nine years of experimentation and the hun- 
dred thousand dollars which his use of bamboo 
filaments had cost him when he discovered a 
way of producing artificial carbon much better 
than that furnished by any plant fiber! Never 
for a moment does he count that time lost which 

*From Dyer and Martinis Life of Edison, New York: 
Harper & Brothers. 

178 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

has been given to putting each factor of his 
problems to the test. 

For many years the carbon light seemed to 
answer all purposes. Then metals were again 
tried. To-day the best lights are made from 
tantalun and tungsten. 

The story of the carbon light is given here 
because it shows in a dramatic way the character 
and methods of work of the great inventor. He 
is always asking questions and where most 
people accept as final the opinions or state- 
ments of others, he never regards a point set- 
tled or takes a thing for granted until he has 
made a practical test. And in his tests he leaves 
no stone unturned, no corner of possibility un- 
explored. 

After Edison had made painstakingly nine 
thousand experiments on his storage battery, 
and was still seeking the right factors for suc- 
cess, one of his assistants remarked sympatheti- 
cally, as he looked at the pile of note-books con- 
taining the story of the fruitless quest up to 
that point, ^*Is n^t it a shame all this work and 
no results!" 

^^Eesults!'' exclaimed Edison, ^'Why, man, 
179 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

I have gotten a lot of results ! I know several 
thousand things that won^t work.'' 

Trials, then, never meant discouragement but 
the clearing of the way for the next thing in or- 
der. ^^The only way to keep ahead of the pro- 
cession is to experiment,'' he says. ^^Stop ex- 
perimenting and you go backward. If anything 
goes wrong, experiment until you get to the 
very bottom of the trouble." 

After some ten thousand experiments with 
the storage battery the happy combination 
sought seemed won at last. The manufacture 
of batteries was going forward merrily. Then 
one day the order came from the master to 
scrap the lot and stop the work until certain 
further improvements had been made. 

^^Then," said one of his laboratory helpers, 
'^came another series of experiments that lasted 
over iaye years. But secrets have to be long- 
winded and roost high if they want to get away 
when the ^Old Man' goes hunting for them. 
He doesn't get mad when he .misses them, but 
just keeps on smiling and firing and usually 
brings them into camp. 

*^That 's what he did with the battery, add- 
180 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

ing improvements here and there until now we 
have a finer battery than we ever expected." 

No expense is spared that may mean success 
to an experiment and so progress in the pursuit 
of knowledge. The thrift of the master is never 
a hoarding of resources but conservation and 
use to the best advantage. '* Millions for prog- 
ress but not one cent for stupid waste, '^ is the 
slogan of this Franklin of our day. He uses in 
his laboratory still some strips of platinum that 
he rescued when a lad in his teens from some 
batteries abandoned as junk in a freight-yard in 
Canada. He has, however, embarked all of his 
capital in more than one venture, as when he 
spent over a million dollars in the attempt to 
extract ores from powdered rock by magnets. 
When experiments finally convinced him that 
the time was not ripe to make his plan a com- 
mercial success, he came up with the smiling 
challenge to fate, ^^Well, now for the next thing. 
It 's all for some good. Keeps me from getting 
a big head. We learned a great deal and it 
will be of benefit some day perhaps." 

The bulldog grip with which Edison seizes 
and holds a problem which he attacks is shown 

181 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

in the following incident. One of his engineers, 
whom he had set to work on a certain problem, 
reported shortly with three drawings which 
Edison examined and set aside as useless. 

**Well, then," said the engineer, *'that 's too 
bad because there 's nothing else to do.'^ 

*^Do you mean,'' said Edison, wheeling quick- 
ly and looking the man full in the face, *^that 
these drawings represent the only way to do 
this work?" 

''I certainly do,'^ replied the engineer un- 
flinchingly. That was on Saturday. When the 
^'Old Man" appeared at his works on Monday 
morning he placed on the engineer's desk 
sketches showing forty-eight possible ways 
of meeting the situation, one of which was sin- 
gled out, slightly modified and put into success- 
ful practice. 

Edison's faithfulness to an idea is shown in 
the way he developed his phonograph, which 
was put aside for ten years while he worked out 
the problem of lighting. Then, as he developed 
the making of moving pictures, he dreamed of 
combining the film and the phonograph in a way 
to make the screen people talk. Great diffi- 

182 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

culties were encountered: As — to mention but 
one — light and sound travel at different rates 
and one cannot ^* register'^ joy or sorrow for 
the camera at the same moment that a record 
is being made of the spoken words. That is, 
however, one of the interesting problems that 
Mr. Edison keeps with him, — a possible triumph 
for some to-morrow that will crown with suc- 
cess the experiments of many hopeful and busy 
yesterdays. 

In the same way he has worked to make really 
worth-while moving pictures that will teach 
while they amuse. To do this he has gone out- 
side of studios and laboratories and studied 
children. Gathering up a group of small boys, 
for instance, he looks at a ^^feature" with them, 
trying to see it through their eyes and get in this 
way the point of view, let us say, of the ten- 
year-old world. 

As the matter of lighting the homes of people 
forced the inventor to put on the shelf for a 
while his fascinating talking-machine, so the 
great war forced him to lay aside many inter- 
esting schemes to take up the life-and-death 
matters of national defense. As Chairman of 

183 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

the Naval Consulting Board he *^did his bit," 
developing ways of meeting the submarine peril. 
An apparatus was developed that could detect 
the sound of a torpedo at a distance of four 
hundred yards, which together with a device for 
the quick change of the course of ships, gave 
practical protection to cargo-carrying vessels. 
A search-light powerful enough to go through 
water and still do its proper work was called 
into being and also a device to help the lookout 
men detect the periscope at a distance by shut- 
ting out the cruel glare of the sun on the water 
and at the same time making the sight more 
sensitive. 

Edison, the chemist, so long kept in the back- 
ground by the demands of his electrical experi- 
ments, also had his ^^ innings'' during the war. 
Some important substances used largely in the 
manufacture of drugs and dyes had been im- 
ported from Germany. Could America learn to 
make its own? Here was a practical need to be 
met; and the boy who had once found in the 
possibilities of chemicals the most fascinating 
kind of play now turned that interest to good 
account. After eighteen days he had found the 

184 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON 

secret of making phenol or carbolic acid and 
at the end of the month his works were tuned 
up to turning out a ton of this chemical in a day. 
So it is that Edison has worked through a 
long life. When asked what his secret of 
achievement is, he always says, ^^Hard work, 
based on hard thinking. ' ' Each day dawns with 
fascinating possibilities, for ^'ihe world is so 
full of a number of things ! " As we have seen, 
he goes at his hard work with all the spirit that 
a boy puts into a great game, and each day is 
a new world. *' Edison has the happy faculty,'' 
to quote his biographers, ' ' of beginning the day 
as open-minded as a child — yesterday's disap- 
pointments and failures discarded and dis- 
counted by the alluring possibilities of to-mor- 



row.''* 



Dyer and Martin: Life of Edison» 



185 



TRANSPORTATION AND PROGRESS 



1 



Binging through the forests, 

Rattling over ridges; 
Shooting under arches, 

Rumbling over bridges; 
Whizzing through the mountains, 

Buzzing o'er the vale, — 
Bless me! this is pleasant, 

Riding on the rail! 

Men of different "stations" 

In the eye of fame, 
Here are very quickly 

Coming to the same; 
High and lowly people, 

Birds of every feather, 
On a common level. 

Travelling together. 

John G. Saxe. 



TRANSPORTATION AND PROGRESS 

FROM the first wheel — a mere log fitted on 
a rude axle so that its rolling could be 
turned to account— to the best carriages of a 
hundred years ago, is not a greater step than 
that from stage-coach to the railroad. The 
Romans, who extended their empire largely 
through their conquering roads, brought some 
portions of the earth in this way somewhat 
nearer to Rome. But the most powerful man 
could not outstrip the speed and the endurance 
of his horse, while the poor had to plod along 
on foot. Mighty Napoleon, at the time of his 
flight from Russia to France, with every pos- 
sible advantage at his command, averaged only 
five miles an hour. This world-conqueror of 
the nineteenth century could not cover the 
ground any faster than Caesar in the first cen- 
tury, B. C. Toward the middle of the nineteenth 
century, however, the face of the world was 

189 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

suddenly changed. The railways reduced dis- 
tances to one tenth of what they had been^ and 
so a man's power — any man's and all men's 
— ^was as the strength of ten. Peoples before 
separated were brought into communication 
with one another. Trade made all men neigh- 
bors. 

^^I^have lived to see the day when poor men 
can't afford to walk," said George Stephenson. 

''I rejoice to see it," said Doctor Arnold of 
Rugby, as he watched a puffing, chugging loco- 
motive drag its length of rattling cars over the 
peaceful landscape. *'Now is feudalism gone 
forever." 

The changes that this great advance in trans- 
portation brought to human history may be 
seen most strikingly in the westward expansion 
of America. The fact that we are to-day ^ * one 
nation indivisible" is due to this change. Mr. 
Wells says in his ^'Outline of History:" 

Europe is still settled in boundaries drawn in the horse 
and road era. In America the effects of the railway were 
immediate. ... It meant there the possibility of a con- 
tinuous access to Washington, however far the frontier 
travelled across the Continent. It meant unity, sustained 
on a scale that would otherwise have been impossible. 

190 



THE CONQUEST OF STEAM 
James Watt (1736-1819) 

GENIUS is the capacity for taking infinite 
pains,'' it has been said. Only those who 
care so much for one thing that they are willing 
to lose everything else for its sake can take 
pains without counting the cost in time and 
effort. They are the rare ones who work for 
the work's sake without, as Edison said, ^ * watch- 
ing the clock. ' ' 

James Watt was a rara avis of this sort. 

But it is worthy of note that the rare bird is 
often, when in the fledgling state, regarded as 
an ugly duckling — ^by every one, that is, except 
the mother. He is unaccountably different : that 
must mean that he is badly hatched. So at 
school it was voted that Edison was ^'addle- 
pated," and James Watt had little love for the 
learning that was most highly prized by the 

191 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

wiseacres of his day. He was clearly not a 
"lad o' parts/' He cared not a whit for Latin 
and Greek. So the schoolmasters saw in him 
only a dull, most unpromising pupil. ' ^ He came 
from a good nest/' said Andrew Carnegie, in 
explaining how this "duckling" won his wings. 
His father was an upright, thrifty man, a suc- 
cessful shipwright and repairer of instruments 
of navigation, such as compass, quadrant, etc. 
His mother, said one of her neighbors, was "a 
braw, braw woman, — none to be seen like her in 
these days." 

It was from his mother that James Watt got 
his real start, despite a most serious handicap. 
For he was a very frail child ; during most of his 
early years he was seldom able to leave the 
house. But while his body drooped and lan- 
guished withindoors, his spirit wandered over 
the heather-covered hills with the brave heroes 
of Scotland, — Eobert Bruce, Wallace, and all 
the other strong-hearts whose deeds live in the 
old ballads. "The heather was on fire within 
Jamie's breast." His imagination, had found 
its wings. 

So from his mother he learned the delight of 
192 



JAMES WATT 

books. Through the pages of print he saw as 
in a magic mirror the beauty and wonder of the 
world. He saw, too, that it was not in the splen- 
did past of romance — in **the glory that was 
Greece and the grandeur that was Eome" — that 
the most interesting things were to be found. 
The bravest hearts beat under the Scottish 
plaid. There was no wonder like that of simple, 
everyday things. 

^^ James Watt, I never saw such an idle boy,'' 
said his aunt one day. ^'You are well enough 
now to learn not to waste time. Take up a book 
or employ yourself usefully. For the last hour 
you have not spoken one word, but have simply 
taken off the lid of that kettle and put it on 
again. Are you not ashamed to be spending 
time in this way I'* 

Jamie's mother, however, seemed to under- 
stand that such hours were not wasted. She 
knew that one learns from studying things as 
well as books. Nor did she scold when he took 
his toys to pieces, but rejoiced with him when 
he showed that he could put the parts together 
in a new way. Of all his playthings, however, 
Jamie liked his box of tools best. With these 

193 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

he early learned to turn his ^Hhinks" into 
things. He learned, too, from his mother the 
delightful possibilities of drawing. Soon it be- 
came natural to him to put on paper an idea and 
consider it from different points of view. 

*'You ought to send that boy to a public 
school,'^ said a friend of his father's, reproving- 
ly, one day, ^^and not allow him to trifle away 
his time at home.'' 

*^Look at how he is occupied before you blame 
him — and me," replied Mr. Watt. The lad was 
at the moment so completely fascinated by a 
problem in geometry that he was blind and deaf 
to all about him. He was thinking quickly, 
eagerly, and then putting a fence about his 
thought with swift, sure strokes. He had found 
in the beautiful exactness of mathematics and 
in the play of mind that it gives a joy as keen 
as that won by the flight of fancy. 

It was soon evident that the sickly boy who 
could not run and jump like other lads had 
learned to use his hands to good purpose. The 
set of tools that his father had given him be- 
came an intimate part of himself. They moved 
as freely and as surely as his thought or his 

194 



JAMES WATT 

fancy. *^ Jamie has a fortune at his finger- 
ends," said the workmen in his father's shop. 

It was well for him that he had his fortune 
in his own hands. For when he was a small boy 
the loss of a ship and other mischances swept 
away his father's capital, and it was necessary 
for Jamie at the age of sixteen to learn a trade. 
There was no question what he should do. His 
love of mathematics and of tools together de- 
cided the matter. He would learn to make the 
delicate instruments that seem to think, so 
mathematically exact are the results they give. 

To Glasgow he went, therefore, to serve an 
apprenticeship with an *^ optician," a handy 
jack of all trades who mended spectacles and 
fiddles, and other musical instruments. This 
was then the only school of experience that the 
city offered. Another door, however, opened to 
his touch that gave him just what he needed. 
The elder brother of his school chum, who was 
a well-known professor of natural philosophy in 
Glasgow University, gave the boy his friendship 
and the freedom of his library. Here he was for 
the moment satisfied. 

**But it 's London that you should have," said 
195 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

his professor friend one evening. ^^ Glasgow 
cannot help you further on your way just now. ' * 
At that time, the journey from Glasgow to Lon- 
don, which now takes but eight hours, was a 
toilsome matter of twelve days. Small wonder 
that young Watt could not bring himself in a 
moment to take this step. Then came a happy 
chance. A sea-captain of the Watt tribe turned 
up who was conveniently ready to make the 
journey with him. So together they set out on 
horseback. 

Here in London was, indeed, the school of 
experience in which he must make his way by his 
own unaided effort. ^'Sink or swim,'' said 
Destiny. ^'Here the weaklings go to the bot- 
tom, while the strong breast the waves and tri- 
umph gloriously, winning ever through the 
struggle new strength.'' 

** Serve seven years as apprentice," said Cus- 
tom. ^ ^ Only those who go the required way can 
be master workers. ' ' 

James Watt soon proved that he could not 
only keep himself afloat but make his way with 
clean, steady strokes. He would not, however, 
agree to bind himself to seven years of ap- 

196 



JAMES WATT 

prenticeship when he knew that he could learn 
what he needed in a twelvemonth and set up his 
own business in Glasgow at the end of that time. 
At last, however, an instrument-maker who ex- 
amined some of the young man's work agreed to 
take him in and let him learn by doing under 
his direction for one year. 

Back in Glasgow, Watt again found himself 
challenged by iron-clad custom, which disputed 
his right to a place in the Guild of Hammermen. 
The members of the guild jealously guarded the 
privileges of their craft. No one can win his 
spurs as a skilled worker in less than seven 
years, it was decreed, though Watt was ready 
to prove his skill by any test that might be de- 
vised. 

But just at this moment of blackest discour- 
agement opportunity beckoned from a door 
where modest James Watt, untaught in the lore 
of schools, would never have dreamed of knock- 
ing. Glasgow University recognized that good 
work is, after all, the true '^open sesame.'' 
When thisi young man proved his worth by mak- 
ing important repairs on some of their delicate 
mathematical instruments the professors ar- 

197 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

ranged to take him under their wing by giving 
him the nse of one of the college rooms for a 
shop, where, besides keeping the apparatus of 
the science laboratories in repair, he could 
practise his craft under the most favorable con- 
ditions. Here he worked at making quadrants 
and other nautical instruments, and when there 
was no work in hand for ships, took in divers 
jobs requiring deft fingers. ''Many dislocated 
violins and fractured guitars, if entreated, did 
he mend right properly, '^ so we are told. 

''The best proof that he was a man of true 
genius is that he first made himself master of 
all knowledge bearing upon his tasks,'' re- 
marks Carnegie in his story of the inventor's 
life. In his university room Watt was ideally 
placed for study and research. Not only did 
he have at his disposal the library and other re- 
sources of a college already renowned in the 
field of science, but he also numbered among 
his familiar friends some of the greatest scien- 
tists of the day. For the little shop proved to be 
a convenient place in which to stop and talk 
over a new idea, and the young man whose 
thinking fingers could bring the most stubborn 

198 



JAMES WATT 

bits of apparatus to terms was frequently a 
friend in need to the learned professors who 
had taken him in. 

^'It is the story of the lion and the mouse, '^ 
said Watt, in response to the warm apprecia- 
tion that he won. ^^I am the one to be grateful, 
— a simple mechanic who has never attended 
college. ' ' 

How the learned men looked upon this modest 
genius may be told in the words of his best 
friend, Bobison, — later professor of natural 
history in Edinburgh University. *^I had the 
vanity to think myself pretty proficient in my 
favorite studies— mathematics and mechanics — 
and was rather mortified at finding Mr. Watt so 
much my superior. But his own high relish for 
those things made him pleased with the chat of 
any person who had the same tastes as himself. 
... I lounged much about him, and, I doubt 
not, was frequently teasing him. Thus our 
acquaintance began.'' 

One of the things that the friends discussed 
was the problem of steam. The young profes- 
sor thought it might be used to wheel carriages. 
Then the matter, which was to Eobison a bit of 

199 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

more or less idle speculation, seized upon 
Watt's mind and gave Mm little rest. 

^ ^ I recognized that steam was a very demon, ' ' 
he said, ^'when I watched the cloud pour from 
my mother's kettle and wondered about the 
antics of the lid. I should like to take a holi- 
day from other things and make some experi- 
ments with it." 

Then Watt discovered that the university had 
procured for the use of its science classes a New- 
comen engine, the most recent model of the en- 
gines used to pump water out of coal mines. 
But, alas! the perverse demon refused to ex- 
hibit its powers. Repairs were made and every 
sort of coaxing experiment tried, but still it re- 
mained obstinate. Others turned from it in dis- 
gust. ' ' Nothing in it, ' ' they said. * ^ What good 
of bothering further with a clumsy bit of junk 
like that!" But to Watt the difficulties proved 
the right sort of spur. ^' Every obstacle," said 
Professor Robison, * Vas to him the beginning 
of a new and serious study, and I knew he would 
not quit it until he had either discovered its 
worthlessness or had made soniething of it." 

In working out this problem Watt had to 
200 



JAMES WATT 

make a path for himself through unexplored 
country. There were no books to serve as 
guides. He discovered that a few studies had 
been made by French and Italian workers and 
he promptly set to work to learn French and 
Italian so as to discover what had been ac- 
complished in other lands. There was no ap- 
paratus to assist him in his experiments. He 
made his own, using ordinary druggist's bot- 
tles for steam-boilers and hollowed-out canes 
for pipes. 

So the work went forward. Then the day of 
discovery dawned. Watt stumbled upon the 
law of latent (i.e., hidden) heat, when he found 
that steam had the power of bringing five times 
its own weight of water to the boiling-point. 
This led him to the realization that much power 
was going to waste. *^If I can only seize and 
harness the force that now escapes, I shall have 
learned how to tame my demon, ' ' he said. At 
least four fifths of the steam in the Newcomen 
engine was, he decided, lost in heating the cold 
cylinder, while upon the remaining fifth rested 
the entire responsibility of moving the piston. 
Heat was constantly wasted, not only through 

201 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

the opening at the top but also at the bottom 
through the process of condensing the charge 
of steam which sent the piston up, in order to 
create a vacuum and bring it down. How could 
the job of bringing back the piston be accomp- 
lished in a better way? 

Then came the wonderful moment of inspira- 
tion. It was so beautifully simple that he won- 
dered why he had not discovered the secret 
earlier, why others had not found it before him. 
One might keep the piston always at the same 
temperature by condensing the steam in a sepa- 
rate contamer to which it should he led after 
each stroke. Just how this was to be done in 
actual practice had to be determined by pains- 
taking experiment, but Watt went forward with 
joyful confidence because he knew he was on 
the right track. 

It was while he was taking a holiday walk one 
Sunday afternoon that the great idea was won, 
and as Watt afterward related, ''the whole 
thing was arranged in my mind.'' That night 
his dreams were run by steam,— steam handled 
by a separate condenser. On Monday morning, 

202 



JAMES WATT 

early, he began with the best materials he could 
muster to turn his dreams into reality. 

In the days of hard work and frequent dis- 
couragement that followed, Watt owed much 
to the help of one of his university friends. Pro- 
fessor Black, the original discoverer of the law 
of latent heat which Watt had also arrived at 
through independent experiments. This friend 
made it possible for him — ^by financial aid no 
less than by his absolute faith in the big idea — 
to devote all his time and strength to the mak- 
ing of his new engine. Standing in the shadow 
beside the master worker whom all the world 
praises for his marvelous gift to mankind is al- 
ways, we may say, some good angel — friend, 
father, mother, or wife — ^who has made the 
carrying on of the work through all difficulties 
possible. 

Honest work in instrument-making (despite 
the unfriendly Guild of Hammermen) had won 
a harvest of success, and Watt's business had 
now grown so that, after taking in a partner 
with capital, he was able to keep as many as 
sixteen men employed in carrying out the or- 
ders that came to him. The little university 

203 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

shop had become too small and he had moved 
his tools into new quarters. But, as we have 
seen, he had not passed beyond the friendship 
of those who had given him his start and who 
now enabled him to carry forward his experi- 
ments with the steam-engine. 

There was much trouble encountered in the 
making of a satisfactory model, for there were 
in those days no workmen skilled in the way 
needed; and Watt himself, though a magician 
in the construction of delicate apparatus, had 
had, as he said, *^very little experience of me- 
chanics in great.'' But he set himself valiantly 
to the task of meeting each emergency as it pre- 
sented itself, and it is due to the fact that he was 
an adept in the practical use of tools — ^having 
a fortune in his fingers as well as in his inven- 
tive brain — that his efforts at last commanded 
success. 

A cellar was found where his steam-breathing 
monster could be accommodated; but, alas! he 
snorted defiantly and even after all "Watt's 
pains to get perfect joints in his apparatus, 
openly sniffed at the cracks in the seams of his 
harness ! However, it was quite clear that the 

204 



JAMES WATT 

principle was right. So Watt set his teeth and 
decided that * ^ it must be followed to an issue. ' ' 
In April, 1765, he wrote to a friend: '^My 
whole thoughts are bent on this machine. I can 
think of nothing else.'* 

Of course money was needed for pushing 
work whose reward (if one were ever reached) 
lay in the remote future. Here Professor Black 
again proved his friendship by securing for 
the inventor the help of Dr. Roebuck, head of 
the famous Carron Iron Works, who paid 
Watt's debts (a matter of a thousand pounds) 
and agreed to provide capital for needed experi- 
ments and patents in return for a two-third in- 
terest in the invention. 

It must here be noted that Wattes first engine, 
like the Newcomen and other earlier models, 
had a perpendicular movement, being designed 
for the raising of water. The boom in coal-min- 
ing at this time and the ever-increasing demand 
for coal as a fuel in the smelting of iron ore 
made a paying engine for pumping out mines 
the crying need of the industrial world. 

It is interesting to see the natural steps by 
which great world-shaking changes come to 

205 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

pass. One thing leads as inevitably to the next 
as in the House that Jack Built. The heavy de- 
mands made upon England's wood supply 
through the use of charcoal in the iron industry 
despoiled the forests. The iron-masters learned 
then, none too soon, how to use coke, which 
created a new demand for coal. The opening of 
mines called for a practical pumping-engine. 
Watt's improvements on this engine proved that 
steam might serve in driving machinery in the 
great cotton and woolen mills, for he soon saw 
that the up-and-down movement might be 
changed into a circular motion through an ar- 
rangement of a crank and a fly-wheel. When 
this was accomplished it was only a matter of a 
few years before it was discovered that the ma- 
chine-driving engine might be made to serve the 
needs of transportation on land and water. So 
it came to pass that the engines for Fulton's 
first steamboat were made by the Watt firm and 
the forerunner of Stephenson's locomotive was 
made by William Murdock, who was, as has 
been told in an earlier chapter, the helper upon 
whose mechanical skill Watt leaned more heav- 
ily than upon any other worker in the building 

206 



JAMES WATT 

of his engine. The use of coal in smelting 
further led to a new process of making wronght- 
iron or Bessemer steel, which provided the ma- 
terial for Watt's engines and for other steam- 
driven machines of the nineteenth century, thus 
completing the cycle of steam. 

It is necessary to pass over with a word sev- 
eral interesting chapters of Wattes story, such 
as that one in which, in order to provide for his 
family in the days when his obstinate ^* mon- 
ster'' seemed determined to put its maker 
through every sort of trial before getting prop- 
erly to work, the inventor took up the work of 
an engineer. For Eoebuck's business had fallen 
upon evil days. His coal-pits were flooded and 
Watt's engine was not as yet able to meet the 
emergency. So the great ironmaster, quite lit- 
erally unable to keep his head above water, met 
financial ruin. He could not pay for the patent 
of the engine, as he had hoped, and once more 
Professor Black came to the rescue; but still 
money was needed with which to meet the daily 
demands of the butcher and the baker. So Watt 
struck a new trail as a surveyor, having ac- 
quired skill in that work while constructing 

207 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

surveying-instruments; and lie was given the 
commission of surveying for the proposed 
Forth and Clyde Canal, and other important 
waterways. His work on the Perth Canal, 
which meant forty-three days of hard work 
through forty miles of rough country, brought 
him, including all expenses, only four hundred 
dollars. No work, even the most skilled, com- 
manded a worthy hire in those days. For the 
plans of a bridge over the Clyde he received 
only thirty-seven dollars. From all of his engi- 
neering commissions in Scotland — among which 
were the plans for docks and piers at Port Glas- 
gow and the survey of the Caledonian Canal — 
he got little more than enough to meet the frugal 
expenses of his household. ''Supposing the en-, 
gine to stand good for itself, I am able to pay 
all my debts and some little thing more, so that 
I hope to be on a par with the world, ' ' he wrote. 
Watt was now able to tide over the hard times 
that came to his venture through the shipwreck 
of Eoebuck's business. ''My heart bleeds for 
him,'' Watt wrote, "but I can do nothing to 
help him. I have stuck by him, indeed, until I 
have hurt myself." 

208 



\ 



JA^IES WATT 

A new iDartnersliip was formed with Matthew 
Boulton, master of the famous Soho Iron Works, 
of Birmingham, who agreed to cancel a debt of 
six thousand dollars which Eoebuck owed him 
in return for the latter 's interest in Watt's 
steam-engine. This came as a godsend to Roe- 
buck's creditors as well as to the grateful in- 
ventor, who wrote frankly to Boulton that the 
engine was far from being at the moment a pay- 
ing invention. "The thing is now a shadow," 
he said. "It is merely an ideal, and it will cost 
time and money to realize it." 

He had, however, come to the right place at 
last. At Birmingham the best mechanics in 
England were to be found to help turn the per- 
fect working-model into a life-sized paying 
steam-engine, which Watt, the inventor, aided 
by Watt, the mechanic, now brought to pass. 

Then came an important demonstration of 
the advantages of the new Watt engine in actual 
practice. The Cornwall mine^ were rapidly be- 
coming unworkable since the Newcomen engines 
then in use could not keep them free of 
water. Orders were received by the firm of 
Boulton and Watt for their much-heralded im- 

209 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

proved engine. It was a crucial moment and one 
fraught with peculiar difficulty, since the New- 
comen interests were openly hostile and ready 
to take any means of defeating their new rival. 
Watt, himself, directed the placing of the trial 
engine, and engineers and mine-owners from 
many parts of England and Scotland as well as 
Cornwall were at hand to witness the result. 
Hurrah ! eleven eight-foot pulls a minute ! That 
broke the record. The new monster pulled with 
greater strength and steadiness, pumping more 
water than the other engines while eating only 
one third the amount of coal that they de- 
manded. Victory was complete. Watt wrote 
of his success: 

/ 
All the west country captains are to be here tomorrow 
to see the prodigy. The velocity, violence, magnitude, and 
horrible noise of the engine give universal satisfaction to 
all beholders, believers or not. I have once or twice 
trimmed the engine to end the stroke gracefully and to 
make less noise, but Mr. Wilson cannot sleep without it 
seems quite furious, so I have left it to the engine men; 
and, by the way, the noise seems to convey great ideas of 
its power to the ignorant, who seem to be no more taken 
with modest merit in an engine than in a man. 

The inventor had at this time found no mas- 
210 



JAMES WATT 

ter mechanic to whom he could entrust the work 
of setting up his engines. It was not until 
William Murdock appeared and proved himself 
that Watt was freed from the problems of prac- 
tical construction and the nagging business de- 
tails that wore on his sensitive spirit above all 
else. 

Then Watt was able to devote his working- 
hours to the improvement of his great invention 
and to making the rotary engine needed in mills 
of all kinds. For, as he said, ^^the people in 
London, Manchester and Birmingham were 
steam-mill mad. ' ' In 1781 he ^ ^ invented certain 
methods of applying the vibrating and recipro- 
cating motion of steam or fire engines to pro- 
duce a continued rotation or circular motion 
round an axis or center, and thereby to give 
motion to the wheels of mills or other ma- 
chines.^' 

A third important improvement on the Watt 
engine was the steam indicator which drew a 
diagram during the stroke of the piston, thus 
indicating the amount of pressure of steam and 
its ratio to the total volume. Engineers could 
by means of this indicator definitely estimate 

211 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

the power and control the work of their engines. 

It must not be forgotten that it was the 
Watt engine — employed later by Fulton — that 
made steam-navigation possible. For the man 
who, through harnessing steam to the tasks of 
man, — by utilizing the latent heat, making it 
perform five times the work that earlier en- 
gines had accomplished, — paved the way for all 
subsequent applications of his invention. 

In 1819, James Watt, at the age of eighty- 
three, was laid to rest in the quiet churchyard 
beside his partner, Matthew Boulton. Later, 
William Murdock, faithful servant and friend, 
after guiding for several years the fortunes of 
the younger Boulton and Watt, who were carry- 
ing on the work of the great firm their fathers 
had established, was laid beside them. A colos- 
sal statue of Watt in Westminster Abbey bears 
the following inscription from the pen of Lord 
Brougham : 

Not to perpetuate a name 

Which miist endure while the peaceful arts flourish 

But to shew 

That mankind have learnt to honor thosa 

Who best deserve their gratitude 

The King 

212 



JAMES WATT 

The Ministers, and many of the nobles 

And commons of the realm 

Raised this monument to 

JAMES WATT 

Who directing the force of an original genius 

Early exercised a philosophic research 

To the improvement of 

The steam engine 

Enlarged the resources of his country 

Increased the power of man 

And rose to an eminent place 

Among the most illustrious followers of science 

And the real benefactors of the world. 

Born at Greenock 1736 

Died at Heathfield in Staffordshire, 1819. 



213 



PIONEERS OF INVENTION 



When the hill of toil was steepest, 
When the forest-frown was deepest, 
Poor, but young-, you hastened here; 
Came where solid hope was cheapest — 
Came — a pioneer. 

Will Carleton. 



PIONEERS OF INVENTION 

THE real difficulty/' said Mr. Edison, *4ii 
each advance in hnman progress, does not 
lie with the inventors but with the public. The 
man with imagination — pioneer, poet, and in- 
ventor — marches in advance of the people. 
Sometimes they are very slow in overtaking 
him; then it is that a great idea may have to 
wait years before it can do its proper work in 
the world." 

We know that the hardest battle that McCor- 
mick had to fight was that of bringing the farm- 
ers to a realization of what the reaper could 
do for them. So Howe, after he had made a suc- 
cessful sewing-machine, nearly starved while he 
was waiting for people to wake up to its value. 
Each new gift to mankind finds unready and 
even unfriendly those it would help. 

So it happens that many inventors lose heart 
and never carry their ideas to completion and 

217 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

practical success. Unless the man of inventive 
genius has also something of the practical abil- 
ity of the business man and the shrewd pro- 
moter, he is apt to see the fruits of his dis- 
covery gathered by others. 

It is also true that when the need of an age 
leads to a great invention, the idea takes root 
in more than one mind at the same time. Many 
experimenters and inventors in different places 
had constructed harvesting-machines when Mc- 
Cormick made the first one that was a success in 
practice and also carried it to the point of com- 
mercial success. A clever mechanic named 
Hunt made a successful lock-stitch sewing-ma- 
chine, but abandoned it as junk ; while Howe en- 
dured poverty and privation in order to bring 
it to the public. Still, it was due in large part 
to the shrewd advertising of Singer that Howe ^s 
idea ' ' carried on ' ' triumphantly. 

When Watt's steam-engine made steam- 
power a practical success in the driving of ma- 
chinery, it was, of course, only a question of time 
when it should be adapted to the needs of trans- 
portation. Several men were working at the 
same time over the problem of the steamboat. 

218 



PIONEERS OF INVENTION 

Many Americans believe that Robert Fulton was 
the inventor, but every one who has read the 
story of Fulton's life knows that this is not 
true. He was, however, the man who gave the 
steamboat to the world by making it a practical 
success. 

William Murdock, it will be remembered, 
made a satisfactory model of a locomotive, but 
yielded to the wishes of Watt and never carried 
his idea further. Trevethick made the first 
traveling engine of full size and complete work- 
ing-power, but became discouraged by the diffi- 
culties he met and decided to try fortune in some 
surer way. It was left for George Stephenson 
to take up his abandoned idea, remake it, and 
give the world the locomotive. 

John Fitch of Connecticut invented a steam- 
boat in 1785 which carried passengers and 
freight for a time on the Delaware between 
Philadelphia and Bordentown but it was aban- 
doned because *^ the weight of the propelling ma- 
chinery left too little displacement for freight 
and passengers to enable her to pay expenses.'' 

The first steamboat that had passed beyond 
the stage of experiment was the Charlotte Bun- 

219 



CONQUESTS OP INVENTION 

daSy which Fulton saw in 1801 towing barges 
upon the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland. 
It was later abandoned because the waves made 
by its paddle-wheels threatened to wash away 
the banks of the canal. But it had clearly 
demonstrated that steam-power was a success 
in water travel and Robert Fulton got from it 
several points which guided him in the plans 
for his engine, built by the firm of Boulton and 
Watt in 1804 and placed upon the Clermont for 
its first trip on the Hudson in 1807. Andrew 
Carnegie says: 

This was the first steamboat ever used successfully for 
passengers, and although Fulton neither invented the boat 
nor the engine, nor the combination of the two, still he is 
entitled to great credit for overcoming innumerable diffi- 
culties sufficient to discourage most men. 

In the winning of the new world of steam- 
navigation the hardy pioneer had to follow in 
the footsteps of the discoverer and subdue the 
wilderness of doubt and hesitation. Robert Ful- 
ton, who worked first as inventor, endured the 
discouragement of finding that others had out- 
stripped his efforts, and, realizing that the real 
need of the moment was the bringing of the in- 

220 



IMONKKItS OF INVKN1 ION 

vontion into j)ractical ijk(} by ovr^rcorriin^ pr)pu- 
lar f)ngijdi(;(i and the; natural rcAuclnncAt of fX'.o- 
plo to rink "^oo(J rrjor^jy" mi a n^^w vftrjturc, 
(J(;t(;rrnirj(Mj to }>(;nd all \\\h on(iri^i(*H to thci tank 
of making stf^arn trav(;l on U\(t llufJson an ac- 
(!r>rripliHh(i(l fact. 

All. horjor, tfK^n, to 1^'ulton, tho man who gavo 
Arncjrica the stoarrjhoat! 



221 



THE MAN WHO GAVE AMERICA THE 
STEAMBOAT 

Robert Fulton (1765-1815) 

QUICKSILVER BOB," the boys called 
him; not only, perhaps, because he was 
always using that elusive mineral in some mys- 
terious experiments, but also because it seemed 
to fit, in a way hard to explain, the eager, bril- 
liant lad. For while Robert Fulton did not dis- 
tinguish himself at book tasks, and was never a 
*^ bright boy" at school, he was always learning 
from the things about him. His comrades re- 
garded with admiration one who could draw pic- 
tures like the life, and make for their flat-bot- 
tomed fishing-boat paddles cleverly worked by 
a sort of double-crank motion much easier than 
poling. 

In the little Pennsylvania town of Lancaster, 
where Robert Fulton's boyhood was spent, 

222 



EOBEET FULTON 

firearms were made and collected during the 
Eevolntion. Eleven years of age at the begin- 
ning of the struggle for independence, the boy 
saw much in those next four years that made 
him long to have a part in great things. Could 
he, perhaps, make a new gun that would help 
win the war? In 1789 he actually succeeded in 
making an air-rifle, — which, however, in all 
probability never saw active service. 

But, after all, the boy found the color of life 
more interesting than gray death and the 
sinews of war. So he found a greater fascina- 
tion in making pictures than in trying to invent 
firearms. He learned to know the look of 
things, the changes and surprises of light and 
shade, and he longed to master the cunning of 
catching, with pencil and color, what he saw. 
He delighted his mates by his clever sketches 
of the Hessian prisoners of war quartered at 
Lancaster. 

The ill-starred Major Andre, who was lodged 
with Mr. Cope, a neighbor of the Fultons, was 
an artist as well as a brave man and gallant 
gentleman. During his last weeks he made 
lovely sketches in color of the fair English 

223 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

country he was never to see again, and gave 
lessons in drawing to some of the American 
boys. Here was a hero who stirred young 
Eobert 's heart and fired his imagination. 

His earliest ideal was also an artist, Ben- 
jamin West, who grew up not far from Lan- 
caster and had been a friend of the Fultons. 
Indeed, some of the first pictures painted by 
the master (now one of the world's great artists 
in London) were portraits of Fulton's father 
and mother. 

Eobert loved to hear the story of the poor 
boy who had gained renown in the country that 
he knew, by painting signs for neighboring 
taverns and pictures on poplar boards, before 
winning fame in Philadelphia and London. He, 
too, would be a painter and make a name in 
the great world. He was late in getting to 
school one day because the important business 
of pounding out lead for a pencil detained him 
at a blacksmith's shop. 

*'It is the very best I ever had, sir," he said, 
displaying his pencil and his excuse for tardi- 
ness at the same time. 

**No doubt about the good pencil/' retorted 
224 




Robert Fulton 



ROBERT FULTON 

tlie schoolmaster. Though young Robert often 
sorely tried his patience, he could not help lik- 
ing the lively boy who found the happiness of 
the world beyond the school-room walls so much 
more interesting than books. 

Indeed, nobody could help liking Fulton. 
When, at the age of seventeen, he followed in 
the footsteps of Benjamin West and went to 
seek his fortune in Philadelphia as an artist, 
he had an ease and charm of manner that made 
friends for him everywhere. At twenty he had 
so far improved his opportunities for study 
and practice in portrait work that he was well 
established as a miniature-painter. 

The first mile-stone on the way to a larger 
life was the opportunity that came to him of 
painting the portrait of Benjamin Franklin. 
The interest of the great American was at once 
won by the talented soldier of fortune, who, be- 
fore he was out of his teens, had built up a 
successful profession and was looking for new 
worlds to conquer. 

** How did you manage during the first 
months before you had persuaded people — like 
me — that they must have you make their like- 

225 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

nessesr' he asked, while young Fulton was 
working away at his easel. 

''At anything I could find,— drawing plans 
for machinery, for carriages, and even for 
houses. You have discovered that I am good 
at making plans ! Then there are always signs 
to paint, if you know the signs of the times!'' 
said the artist as he studied the friendly eyes 
of his sympathetic subject. 

''And you made your own way, unaided, 
from the start?" 

"Why, yes,'' replied the other modestly. 
"There was, too, the added incentive of send- 
ing money home. You see, my father died when 
I was three years old, and my mother has had 
a hard struggle managing for ^ve children. If 
I might have been tempted to waste my days 
or fail to hunt up opportunities when I didn't 
see any right at hand, I couldn't when I knew 
she needed my help," he added simply. 

Of course this appealed strongly to Poor 
Richard. "God helps them who help them- 
selves, young man," he said cordially. "You 
have already begun to learn the truth of that 

226 



EOBEET FULTON 

for yourself and you will find friends a plenty 
to prove it further." 

And Franklin at once added to encouraging 
words the substantial help of introductions to 
other Philadelphians of consequence who were 
likely to want family portraits and miniatures. 

* ^ But it is in England that you will get your 
proper start, lad/' counseled the great man. 
^ ' Put by all you can to that end. A penny 
saved is a penny earned, remember. I can give 
you a letter to Benjamin West, who should put 
you on the way of becoming a real artist." 

**He grew up in Chester County not far from 
our home," replied Fulton, ^^and my father 
knew his father well. I should indeed like to 
follow in his footsteps, as far as London, — and 
beyond, to success as a painter." 

With that ideal before him, Fulton worked 
harder than ever, with the result that early in 
the next year, when he was twenty-two years 
of age, he had saved enough to pay for a small 
farm for his mother, and his own passage to 
England. He had besides, as capital for the 
new start in life, forty guineas, and a letter 
from Franklin to Benjamin West. 

227 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

During the next four years, which Fulton 
spent as a pupil in West^s studio, he knew 
poverty, though never, because of his thrift and 
his readiness to turn small opportunities to 
good account, was he in actual want. A letter 
dated July 31, 1789, to his mother, shows the 
economies he was forced to practise, and also 
throws light on the lack of postal facilities be- 
fore the days of steam transportation : 

Write small and close so that you may say a great deal in 
small compass, for the ships often put the letters ashore 
at the first port they make. Then they come post to Lon- 
don and I have often paid half-a-guinea for a small package 
of letters ... so if you can send me a pound of news upon 
an ounce of paper I shall save almost a guinea by it. 

The next years of Fulton's life must be 
passed over with a word. He worked earnestly 
as a painter and produced some pictures that 
gave real promise, but, at thirty, he decided 
to give up canvas and brush for problems of 
engineering. As a boy he had shown marked 
constructive as well as artistic ability, and he 
had always been interested in the possibilities 
of improved navigation. Now, feeling doubtful 
of ever becoming a painter of the first rank, he 

228 



ROBERT FULTON 

decided to begin life anew as an engineer. 
^^ People certainly need better waterways/' lie 
thought. ^*I am not sure that they need my 
pictures." 

For five or six years he occupied himself with 
problems of canals, which were then the chief 
arteries of commerce, inventing a *^ digging- 
machine'' to assist in their construction, and 
a sort of inclined plane apparatus to lift boats 
from one level to another. 

In 1796 Fulton published *^A treatise on 
Canal Navigation," in which he said he hoped 
to make plain the numerous advantages to be 
derived from small canals" in developing the 
resources of a country. He sent a copy of the 
book to President Washington with a letter 
laying before him his plan to ** bring water- 
carriage within the easy cartage of every acre 
of the American states." The letters of Ful- 
ton to Washington at this time make clear that 
the project of the Erie Canal originated with 
him. Nothing came of his inventions, how- 
ever, and the special pleader for better canals 
would have been in dire straits to make a living 

229 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

had it not been for his gift of winning friends 
wherever he went. A letter written by the 
daughter of Edmund Cartwright, the gifted 
^^poet of many inventions/' shows that Fulton 
was at this time spending not a little thought 
on the matter of steam-navigation: 

Amongst other ingenious characters who frequented Mr. 
Cartwright's house may be noticed one who was then 
deeply engaged in pursuits similar to his own^ but whose 
claim to originality of inventions have not been very will- 
ingly admitted on this side of the Atlantic. This person 
was Robert Fulton. . . . The coincidence of their respective 
views produced, instead of rival-ship, intimacy and friend- 
ship between the two projectors, and Mr. Fulton's vivacity 
and original way of thinking rendered him a welcome 
guest to Mr. Cartwright's house. . . . The practicability of 
steam navigation, with the most feasible way of effecting 
it, became a frequent subject of discourse. 

In a letter sent to Cartwright from Paris, 
Fulton wrote, February 16, 1798 : 

It would give me much pleasure to make the produce of 
your mind productive to you. You will therefore consider 
what part of your inventions I may be entrusted with. The 
steam engine, I hope, may be useful in cutting canals and 
moving boats, so that will be directly in my line of business. 
By the by, I have just proved an experiment on moving 
boats with a fly of four parts similar to that of a smoke- 
jack, thus 

230 



ROBEET FULTON 




I firiw this applies the power to great advantage and it is 
extremely simple . . . My small canals are making many 
friends; which business I shall leave under the guidance of 
a company. 

In an earlier letter to Lord Stanhope, Fnlton 
had said: ^^In June, 1793, I began the experi- 
ments on the steamship; my first design was 
to imitate the spring in the tail of a salmon.'^ 
Learning, however, that Symington and others 
had carried the matter of steam-navigation far 
beyond this point, Fnlton gave np the idea for 
the time to devote himself to the problem of 
canals. 

He spent several years in France, hoping to 
introduce there his canal project. He also in- 
vented a submarine torpedo-boat which he be- 
lieved might find favor with Napoleon. To 
his explosive projectile he gave the name of 
^^ torpedo'' from the torpaedo or * ^ cramp-fish, " 
which, travelers reported, had ''sl device to 

231 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

beget liberty by evaporating a cold breath to 
stupifie such as either touch or hold a. thing 
that touches it." The experiments with these 
deadly missiles as well as with the ^'plunging- 
boats" for handling them showed results so 
far in advance of the time that Bonaparte's 
scientific experts called them ^'a mad scheme," 
and the inventor *'a visionary." 

In England, those who had been watching 
with not a little anxiety the threatened alliance 
between the man of ideas and the disturber of 
the world's peace who called himself the Man 
of Destiny, now drew a breath of relief. Should 
Britannia investigate this new menace to her 
rule of the waves and perhaps add it to her 
means of defense ? The letter to Fulton which 
put an end to the hope of assistance from that 
quarter is of more than passing interest. His 
counsel wrote: 

I met Count Ruinford, who told me ... all the particu- 
lars about the Royal Institution. He talked a great deal 
about the plunging-boat and said that he and Sir Charles 
Blagden [secretary of the Royal Society of London] agreed 
that its effects could not be doubted, but that it would 
never be brought into use, because no civilized nation would 
consent to use it ; that men, governments and nations would 

232 



ROBEET FULTON 

fight, and that it was better for morals and general happi- 
ness of all people that the fighting should be done on land. 

*^Well, that matter is put aside, for the pres- 
ent at least, '^ said Fulton. ^^I had hoped to 
give people a means of defense for their coasts 
and their harbors that would make them secure 
against invasion and the attack of war-makers. 
But it seems intended that I should work more 
directly to secure the liberty of the seas and 
the happiness of the earth through the steam- 
boat. The time has surely come for better and 
more certain means of navigation. It must be 
made a success." 

During his years of experimentation in 
Paris, Fulton's income was derived from a 
panorama, **The Burning of Moscow," which 
he painted and installed in a large circular 
building on a street which to this day celebrates 
that first exhibit of the sort given in the city 
in its name, Rue des Panorames. He was not a 
stranger in the French city, for his gift for 
friendship had so commended him to Joel Bar- 
low, the American poet and diplomat, living 
at that time in Paris, that he was invited to 
make his home under the Barlow roof. **Toot," 

233 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

as this new friend affectionately called him in 
playful allusion to his steamboat ambitions, 
was introduced by Barlow to Robert R. Liv- 
ingston, minister plenipotentiary of the United 
States to France. 

This was the time, 1801, when Spain's ces- 
sion of Florida and Louisiana to France was 
causing great uneasiness in the United States. 
Would Bonaparte try to work as many changes 
in the New World as he had in Europe? So 
great relief was felt in America when, in 1803, 
Napoleon, hoping to raise up a powerful enemy 
to England as well as to get money for his 
schemes of conquest, agreed to sell Louisiana 
to the United States for $15,000,000. 

It soon developed that Livingston was vitally 
interested in the steamboat, to which he had 
given much study; and he was not slow in 
learning that Fulton was a man of character 
and original ideas, combined with rare mechan- 
ical experience and judgment. After a dinner 
at the Barlows' the men sat far into the night 
talking over what had been so far accomplished 
by the steamboat. 

*'It must be a good thing," said Fulton, his 
234 



EGBERT FULTON 

deep-set eyes flashing witli the intensity of his 
conviction. ^^Of course I know that after the 
failure of better men than I am to make steam 
pay in running boats, sensible people will say 
I 'm simply one more fool courting ruin to in- 
sist on trying out my ideas. But I believe if 
we could make some trials on a big enough 
scale to have them really prove something in a 
practical way we might go forward with real 
confidence. ' ' 

'^Let us join forces and see if together we 
can steam successfully into our desired haven," 
responded Livingston, and the two men joined 
hands in sign of their new partnership of in- 
terests. Mr. Livingston agreed to advance five 
hundred pounds for the construction of an ex- 
perimental boat to be put on the Seine for a 
thorough testing. 

But Fate seemed determined to put Fulton 
himself to a new trial before giving him the 
first taste of real success. As the boat lay in 
her moorings ready for the great moment when 
she should be allowed to show her points to an 
amazed world, a sudden hurricane descended 
upon her and the little pioneer craft, not able 

235 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

to meet the strain, allowed her heavy engine 
to fall through to the bottom of the river. 

Fulton was in bed when the news of the 
wreck was brought to him. He hurried out and 
worked all day without pausing for rest and 
food until he had succeeded in rescuing the 
machinery. It was said that his lungs, always 
weak, never recovered from the strain of that 
day ; but his spirits showed no sign of drooping. 

''We '11 have another boat large and strong 
enough to handle our noble engine in storm as 
well as in fair weather,'' he said. ''The moment 
of triumph has only been postponed a little." 

When that moment came (in August, 1803) 
one of the Paris papers wrote of the event as 
follows : 

A trial was made of a new invention, of whieli the com- 
plete and brilliant success should have important conse- 
quence . . . During the past two or three months there has 
been seen at the end of the Quay Chaillot a boat of curious 
appearance equipped with two large wheels mounted on 
an axel like a cart, while behind these wheels was a stove 
with a pipe, as if there was some kind of a small fire-engine 
intended to operate the wheels of the boat. ... At six 
o'clock in the evening the builder, assisted by three persons 
only, put his boat in motion with two other boats in tow be- 
hind it and for an hour and a half he afforded the curious 

236 



EGBERT FULTON 

spectacle of a boat moved by wheels like a cart; these 
wheels being provided with paddles or flat plates and being 
moved by a fire-engine. The savants and representatives 
of the Institute who were on one of the boats will doubtless 
give to this discovery the eclat which it deserves; for this 
mechanism applied to our rivers, the Seine, the Loire and 
the Rhone, would be most advantageous to our internal 
navigation. The tows of barges which now require four 
months to come from Nantes to Paris would arrive promptly 
in from ten to fifteen days. The author of this brilliant 
invention is M. Fulton, an American and a celebrated 
mechanician. 

More than three years passed before Fulton 
returned to America to launch his steamboat 
there. They were years of large hopes for the 
submarine, because the fear of an attack upon 
the EngHsh coast by the all-powerful Napoleon 
had seized the people of Great Britain like a 
panic ; the British ministers were ready to meet 
the inventor's terms, when Nelson's victory 
over the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar 
put an end to that nightmare and incidentally 
to Fulton's prospect of large fortune. He had, 
however, received for his services a consider- 
able sum from the British Government, — ^not 
only enough for his immediate needs and for 
the purchase of engines for his American 

237 



GONQIJESTS OF INVENTION 

steamboat, but also a sufficient margin so that 
lie was able to take back with him as a gift to 
America two of Benjamin West's paintings, 
** Ophelia'' and ^'King Lear." 

Monday, August 17, 1807, was a great day for 
Eobert Fulton and for America. On that day 
his steamboat, called the Clermont after Liv- 
ingston's estate on the Hudson, made a trip 
from New York to Albany (a distance of one 
hundred and fifty miles) in thirty- two hours. 
Then his years of observation and experiment, 
of careful study of earlier attempts and the 
reasons for their small success, bore fruit in 
the construction of a thoroughly practical 
steamboat. 

A great crowd had gathered at the dock in ^ 
North Eiver to see the end of ''Fulton's Folly" 
as they dubbed the strange craft, but as it 
swung around into the channel against the 
wind, overtaking and leaving behind sloops and 
schooners ''as if they had been at anchor," 
ridicule gave way to amazement and then to 
wild cheers of excitement and enthusiasm. The 
steamboat had come into its own. 

After that first epoch-making trip the Cler- 
238 



EGBERT FULTON 

mont plied back and forth regularly along the 
Hudson, and before long the steamboat whistle 
heralded the new day on the other great rivers 
of America. For all the centuries since first 
rafts and hollowed-out canoes were made, man 
had until now been subject to wind and tide or 
dependent upon his own galley-slave toil at the 
oars. Through Fulton's gift, a wonderful new 
power was his, and a new world was won. For 
in fifty years the steamships that plied about 
the globe had brought the remote and the un- 
known near, and all the nations of the earth into 
relation one with another. 

Success proved to be as exacting a mistress 
to Fulton as the struggle for achievement. He 
worked now as tirelessly to extend the useful- 
ness of his steamboat as he had toiled when 
his friends watched with alarm his daily sacri- 
fice of health and comfort to the furtherance 
of his inventions. A letter from Joel Barlow 
to his wife shows the anxiety these friends felt 
for him during the days of experiment in Paris : 

Tell "Toot'^ that the machine of his body is better and 
more worthy his attention than any other machine he can 
make; that preservation is more useful than creation; and 

239 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

that unless he could create me one in the image of himself 
he had better preserve his own automaton. Read this lec- 
ture to him, or one better, on the preservation of health 
and vigor, every morning at breakfast. 

Fulton's sudden death, February 23, 1815, 
when he was at the height of his powers, de- 
prived the United States of the services of one 
of her most useful citizens. He had gone as 
a witness in a dispute over the construction of 
ferry-boats to Trenton, New Jersey, when he 
was detained because the Hudson was partially 
blocked with ice. 

^^ We may as well use the time in seeing what 
headway is being made with the repairs on our 
boats,'' he said to his friends. The exposure 
of the trip across the ice to the docks resulted 
in an illness from which he had but partly re- 
covered when, against all persuasion, he in- 
sisted on again going to New Jersey to see how 
the work was progressing. This imprudence 
cost the inventor his life. 

In September, 1909, America celebrated the 
Centenary of Fulton's success and the Tercen- 
tenary of Henry Hudson's exploration of the 
river named after him. In a splendid river 

240 



EGBERT FULTON 

pageant, calling to mind the triumplis that 
three hundred years of civilization and prog- 
ress had brought to America, first in place of 
honor was the Clermont, a full-sized replica 
of which had been built for the occasion. 

We have in the contrast between the little 
Clermont that cost but thirty thousand dollars, 
and excited the wonder of all by her speed of 




The '< Clermont 



and its mighty descendant, the 
**Lusitania '^ 



four miles an hour, and the palatial *^ Robert 
Fulton'' which cost a round million and to-day 
makes the trip from New York to Albany at the 
rate of twenty-five miles per hour (while the 
fare has been reduced from $7 to $1) a vivid 
picture of the progress in transportation 
brought to pass through ''Fulton's Folly." 



241 



STEPHENSON AND THE LOCOMOTIVE 

George Stephensoit (1781-1848) 

IT is a fact worthy of note that most of the 
great labor-saving, time-conquering inven- 
tions have been made in the workshop, by men 
in the ranks, not by technical experts or cap- 
tains of industry. So it was that John Kay 
and James Hargreaves, humble weavers, in- 
vented the fly-shuttle and the spinning- jenny 
that brought the new era of the machine in tie 
making of cloth, changing the meaning of the 
word ''manufacture" from hand-made to ma- 
chine-made. Cyrus McCormick was a farm boy 
who had known the heat and burden of swinging 
scythe and cradle in a wheat-field under a sum- 
mer sun. Eli Whitney and Elias Howe were 
ingenious Yankee mechanics, and James Watt 
was a self-taught instrument-maker. William 
Murdock, who made the model of the first loco- 

242 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

motive, was a practical macliinist, and George 
Stephenson, the inventor whose iron horse 
made steam travel an accomplished fact, was an 
unlettered engineer. 

When a tiny boy, little George Stephenson 
loved to sit by the furnace fire listening to the 
stories that his father loved to tell. For the 
grimy fireman, whose task it was to stoke the 
engine that pumped water from a coal-mine, 
could tell tales of golden adventure, — of slaves 
of the lamp, magic rings, and fairy palaces. 
As little George stood near in round-eyed 
wonder, he could see in the glow and flicker of 
the flames bright lands far away from the 
smoke and toil of the coal country where he was 
bom. 

But it was not alone in the things of a far- 
away and long-ago wonder world that the little 
lad learned to delight. On a Sunday when his 
father had washed away the black of the mine, 
they would often walk beyond the little village 
and its colliery, over green fields and hill paths 
toward Newcastle, through free, happy places 
where birds sang and small furry creatures 
scuttled about in the underbrush. Once his 

243 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

father lifted Mm up so that he could look down 
into a blackbird's nest and see the hungry wee 
birds. 

^^They 're all for worms now, but think of 
the singing that '11 come from that nestful after 
a bit," said the father, who could whistle like 
the birds and bring them to his hands for 
crumbs. 

Indeed, the birds came to their friend when 
he sat at his cottage door and even sometimes 
flew in at the open window. In winter, flocks of 
robins would come about his engine fire after 
crumbs from his dinner-pail as fearlessly as 
the children gathered about him begging for 
stories. / 

*'01d Bob," as the neighbors called him, was 
indeed rich in the lore of birds, beasts, and 
little children. But it was hard work to pro- 
vide food for six bairns on twelve shillings a 
week, and George was very happy when he was 
able to earn something to help out. 

He had shown that he was a manly little chap, 
ready to jump forward to meet a need when, a 
lad of eight, he earned the fifteen pence that his 
sister needed to buy a bonnet. She had taken 

244 



GEORaE STEPHENSON 

him to Newcastle to keep her company; and 
it had been a happy day until he saw the tears 
that came in NelPs eyes because she could not 
buy the hat on which she had set her heart. 

'^ Never heed, Nell, come wi' me and 1 11 see 
if I canna win siller enough to buy the bonnet," 
said Geordie. *^ Stand ye there till I come 
back. ^ ' And he was off before she could speak. 

There she stood until her fears had grown 
as dark as the gathering shadows. The market 
carts had all gone clattering away, when he 
appeared breathless but triumphant. 

^^Here 's the siller for the bonnet, Nell,'' he 
panted. 

''Eh, Geordie!" she said fearfully, *'but hoo 
hae ye gotten it?" 

''Hauddin the gentleman's horses!" he re- 
turned. 

Soon George was working every day and all 
day for a regular wage — twopence, it was — 
caring for a neighbor's cattle. It was not hard 
work, and the barefoot boy could make friends 
with the birds, gather berries, and cut whistles 
out of the reeds that grew by the brook-side. 
He learned many things, too, in his open-air 

245 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

school; he could understand the language of 
skylarks and linnets, but he knew nothing of 
the lore of books. 

Of all the things in George ^s world, how- 
ever, the engine that his father tended seemed 
the most interesting. It was a queer, creaking, 
wheezing monster, but that made it, perhaps, 
the more interesting to the child, who found 
something friendly in its ''talking^' ways as the 
pump went down with a plunge and a bump, to 
rise— bumpety swish!— as the water was 
poured out with a rush. He longed to do a 
real man's work and mind the engine that kept 
the mines from being flooded, and so made it 
possible for the men to get the coal out of the 
deep black pit. It was a proud day when he 
was given a job as ''picker,'' to sort the good 
coal from stones and dross. He had now a real 
part in the wonderful mines that were making 
England great. For he knew that the coal 
went to the coke-ovens where iron was made 
ready for man's use. 

If any one asked George what he wanted to 
do when he grew to be a man, he said promptly, 
*'Mind an engine like Feyther!" The little 

246 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

engines which, he molded in clay during his 
play hours told the same story. And when the 
sturdy, well-grown boy of fourteen was pro- 
moted to the job of assistant fireman at a shill- 
ing a day, he felt that he had won a new round 
on his ladder. 

Despite the long hours of hard work, the 
growing lad became tall and strong. There was, 
indeed, strength to spare after the toil of the 
day, for exercises such as wrestling, throwing 
the hammer, lifting of weights, and other mus- 
cular feats. And though he had never been to 
school, his mind was growing, because he was 
always wide awake to the things about him. 

At seventeen he had proved himself both so 
ready of hand and quick of wit that he was 
made ^ ' plugman ' ' of the engine which his father 
fired. He was now special guardian of his 
great iron companion of the mines. Besides 
tending the pumps to see that they were draw- 
ing properly, he must, when the level of the 
water in the mine was lowered, drop down into 
the shaft and adjust, or plug, the apparatus 
so that the pump would draw properly. A 
plugman was also the engine doctor in all its 

247 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

minor ailments, with the chief engineer as ex- 
pert adviser in case of special difficulties. 

' ^ I am made a man for life ! ' ' cried young 
George Stephenson, triumphantly. It seemed 
as if he had all his desire in this proud part- 
nership with the engine in the care of the 
mines. How he loved that engine! His spare 
hours were spent in petting it, coaxing it, and 
studying all its tricks and manners. Nothing 
delighted him more than taking it apart and 
putting it together again. The chief engineer 
was seldom troubled by an S. 0. S. call from 
Master George. 

The young engine-man was altogether 
happy. Only in the evenings when he called 
in a fellow worker to read aloud the news to 
him by the light of the engine, did he look wist- 
ful. For the pages of print that told day by 
day the tale of what Napoleon was doing to the 
map of Europe meant nothing to Stephenson. 
He must wait until some one who had been to 
school should come along to help him out of his 
blindness. 

**Am I too old to learn my letters?'' Stephen- 
son wondered. *^Can I not find some one to 

248 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

teach me at night T' Then when he heard 
something about the wonderful new engines 
made by James Watt he knew that he must 
learn. If there were no way at hand he would 
make one. He had to know all about those 
engines. 

A schoolmaster was found who gave him 
lessons three evenings a week for threepence — 
learning, like labor, was cheap in those days— 
and at nineteen George was able to spell out 
the news of the day and even read about the 
success of the Boulton and Watt engines in the 
Cornish coal-mines. 

^' Don't you get enough of engines, working 
with them all day, that you want to play at 
making them all night f jeered one of young 
Stephenson's companions. For it seemed that 
when George was not busy tinkering at his pet 
monster he was amusing himself making dif- 
ferent sorts of engines in clay, just as he had 
done as a little boy. 

** There 's more to engines than one would 
think,'' George would reply; ''always some- 
thing new to study out. ' ' 

By day and by night George ever found some- 
249 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

thing new to learn. From a fellow worker he 
*^ picked np^^ the .responsible work of brake- 
man, and was promoted to the care of the ma- 
chinery which raised the huge baskets of coal 
from the pit. This meant regulating the speed 
of the engine by a powerful brake at the mo- 
ment when the load appeared at the mouth of 
the shaft and reversing it at the right moment 
to carry the empty baskets down to be filled. 

Young George Stephenson was now generally 
known as an expert workman and a man of un- 
common character and thrift. He found time 
to add to his earnings by mending and making 
shoes and also by repairing clocks. Sometimes 
he made a few extra shillings of an evening by 
shoveling ballast from the coal-ships. And al- 
ways while he was earning, his native mother- 
wit kept him learning something new. For in- 
stance, while wielding the spade he discovered 
the way of standing and swinging his arms that 
made for the best results. And years after- 
ward, when he had become the most famous 
engineer in England, he would sometimes take 
a spade from a worker in his own mines, and 
say, *^Look you, now, — see how much better it 

250 



GEORaE STEPHENSON 

goes so!" He showed that intelligence means 
power at hard labor as elsewhere, and that he 
took pride in the work of his hands as well as 
in the great achievements of his inventive 
brain. 

Somehow he managed to turn into good for- 
tune incidents and accidents that would simply 
have meant bad luck to others, as when his 
house caught fire and his most cherished pos- 
session, an eight-day clock, was badly damaged 
by the water that had been thrown over every- 
thing in the cottage. Repairs would mean a 
heavy tax on his little savings. Why not see 
what he could make of the tiny wheels! And 
then the master of engines learned the fascina- 
tion and strength of these small wheels, as his 
fingers mastered the cunning of the clock- 
maker. Soon he was the most popular doctor 
of clocks, as well as of engines, in the neighbor- 
hood. 

In his proper line, he could not only prescribe 
for coughing, wheezing pumping-engines, but 
in situations where the ordinary pumps would 
not work he managed to set up machines made 
for the particular job, as when he was called 

251 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

in to free the valuable Ochre Quarry of water. 
*^I '11 set up an engine here a little bigger than 
a kale-pot that should clear you out in a week, ' ' 
he said, and was as good as his word. 

Some months of hard work went by with every 
moment turned to such good account that, while 
he was still an engine-wright at a hundred 
pounds a year he was able to care for his old 
father — ^blind and helpless nov7 through an ac- 
cident in the mine — and also to send his young 
son, Eobert, to a good school in Newcastle. 

The father watched the lad as he cantered 
off on his donkey — his ''cuddy'' he called him— 
with his bag of books and his bag of lunch 
swinging merrily in time with the brisk canter 
of the little beast. ''He '11 not have to work 
so hard and make so many useless moves as I 
have," said Stephenson, who was daily dis- 
covering some short cut he might have taken in 
his mechanical problems if he had only had the 
knowledge, which books might have given, of 
what others had accomplished. And often, in 
the evenings, the father would look up from 
the crippled clock or engine on which he worked 
to fall in step with the boy at his book tasks. 

252 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

The Stephenson cottage was a famous place 
with a flourishing garden presided over by a 
wonderful ^^fley-craw" which the wind turned 
into a waving terror to all birds that would 
seriously injure the prize vegetables, but where 
there were always tame blackbirds or throstles 
about, ready to pay for their supper with a 
song. Within, the workroom was a place of 
wonders, from the clever fastening of the door, 
that opened only to the master's touch, to the 
new models of engines, alarm-clocks for sleepy 
miners, and lamps that would burn underwater. 

Stephenson had already made some success- 
ful engines for raising coal from the pit, and a 
self-acting incline whereby the full wagons of 
coal, descending, pulled up empty cars to the 
point of loading, when the problem of a loco- 
motive seized upon his thought. There was, 
of course, a pressing need for quicker and more 
economical transportation of the heavy loads 
from the mines. Flat wagon roads of cast-iron, 
and then tracks of wood and iron, were laid 
to lessen the strain on the horses. As a child, 
George Stephenson had seen horses drag 
wagons of coal, from the colliery where his 

253 



CONQUESTS OF IN^^NTION 

father worked, over fonr miles of wooden 
tracks, to be loaded on to barges and floated off 
to the big world beyond Newcastle, — to London, 
perhaps. 

In 1604, a man named Trevethick, had made 
an experiment with a locomotive on one of these 
tramways, but the heavy engine had done such 
damage to the precious roadvv^ay that he could 
not persuade the mine-owners to repair it with 
better materials for a further trial. For people 
really pinned their faith to the improved tracks ; 
an iron horse just fitted to run over them 
seemed a thing of m^'th or fair^^ tale. 

Before this, in 1784, William Murdock (then 
in the employ of James Watt) had made a suc- 
cessful model of a locomotive, but even his 
chief, whom all sane men were agreed in re- 
garding as the first authority on steam-engines, 
called this experimentation '^a waste of time 
and money in hunting shadows.^' He found 
Murdock, however, hard to convince, and two 
years later (September, 1786) Watt was so 
fearful that the servdces of his most valuable 
engine-maker would be lost to him, through 
this growing interest in the ''shadow hunt," 

254 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

that we find him writing to his partner, Matthew 
Boulton, of his concern becanse their faithful 
'^William'' was '* busying himself with the 
steam-carriage." **I have still," he added, 
*^the same opinion concerning it that I had; 
but to prevent as much as possible more fruit- 
less argument about it I have one of some size 
under hand and am resolved to try if God will 
work a miracle in favor of these carriages." 

So it was that even though Trevethick's 
engine showed great promise, its brilliant in- 
ventor became discouraged because his heavy 
monster tore up the iron plates in the roadway. 

*'We know that a good track is worth some- 
thing," said the mine-owners, *^and we '11 not 
put do\^Ti another for you to ruin in your crazy 
experiments." 

This was in 1804. And Trevethick, who had 
inventive genius without the perserverance to 
carry his ideas to success despite opposition 
and difficulties, gave up the fight. But still 
the need for something that could handle the 
coal, which was ever in greater demand as ma- 
chinery came more and more into use, drove 
some men to try * ^ if God would work a miracle ' ' 

255 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

througli steam, and give an engine power to 
move itself about on wheels. 

Simple as the thing seems to-day even to 
children, who are born into a world of * ^horse- 
less carriages," at the time that Stephenson 
began his locomotive, scientific men and engi- 
neers everywhere believed that if a heavy 
weight should be attached to an engine, the 
smooth wheels on the smooth tracks would sim- 
ply spin around in one spot. So firmly was 
this idea rooted in men's minds, that even after 
George Stephenson's locomotive was running 
between Liverpool and Manchester, and a 
model of it placed on exhibition before the 
scientists of the French Academy, one of the 
learned members said, smiling: ^'Yes, this is a 
wonderfully ingenious contrivance, no doubt, 
but unfortunately the machine can never move. 
The wheels will turn round and round in the 
same place." But Stephenson, who had seen 
one or two experiments with crude locomotives 
which did move despite everything, brought to 
the great problem just what was needed,— per- 
severance and sound mechanical experience. 
While Treve thick threw his locomotive on the 

256 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

junk-heap to follow other more alluring possi- 
bilities, the plodding engine-wright buckled 
down to the task in earnest, and brought to 
practical success an invention which was to 
change the whole course of the world's history. 

Those first locomotives Stephenson saw 
were made with four pushers or legs which the 
engine worked like the legs of a horse to grip 
the rails and make the wheels carry the cars 
forward. They were clumsy monsters with an 
odd collection of pumps, cog-wheels, and plugs 
that needed the most constant attention to keep 
them going according to plan. 

**How do you get onf an engine-driver was 
asked one day. 

' ' Get on, ' ' he exclaimed. * * We don 't get on ; 
we only get off!" For it frequently happened 
that horses had to be sent to drag the bulky 
engines to be overhauled and to carry the coal- 
wagons in the old slow-but-sure fashion. 
Though, it must be understood, there was 
nothing that remotely suggested rapid transit 
in the locomotive as Stephenson saw it in 1813. 
At best it could drag a weight of seventy tons 

257 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

on a level road at the rate of three miles an 
hour. 

**I think I can make a better engine than 
any I have seen yet, to go npon legs," said 
George Stephenson at this time. He saw that 
all were practical failures, clumsy and expen- 
sive to run. They ate coal at a terrible rate, 
tore up roadways in the most ruthless fashion, 
and sometimes the angry boiler would burst 
and scatter the pieces of the sad experiment in 
every direction. 

^^ Still,'' said George Stephenson, with slow 
emphasis, ^'I think I can make an engine that 
will go and will pay." He said this not idly 
to himself or to idle bystanders, but, carefully 
weighing his words, to Lord Eavensworth, 
principal owner of the Killingworth Colliery. 
*^Well, Stephenson," said the capitalist, 
^^we Ve had chances to see what you 're worth 
as an engineer, both above and below ground 
here at the mines. I know that you know what 
you 're about, and that you do not give up 
until you see a job to a finish. If you are will- 
ing to spend your time and strength on this 

258 



GEORGE OTEPHENSON 

things I am willing to spend the money for the 
trial/' 

^' There 's more in it that anybody dreams 
of/' declared Stephenson earnestly, ^^for 
there 's no limit to the speed of such an engine 
if the works can be made to stand." 

Stephenson had the difficulties of a pioneer 
in a wholly new field. There were no skilled 
mechanics or proper tools and apparatus at 
hand. Everywhere he had to break ground and 
to build from the ground up. But on July 25, 
1814, he placed on the Killing^vorth railway 
an engine (which in general followed the plan 
of earlier models) that drew eight loaded car- 
riages of thirty tons weight at about four miles 
an hour, and kept steadily at work at this rate. 

Though this was a great advance over any- 
thing so far accomplished, it seized chiefly to 
urge the inventor on to new effort. He saw 
that the parts were so huddled together that 
they did not have proper play, and the forward 
movement was so violently jerky that the ma- 
chinery was under a constant strain. 

Now the patient mechanic, who had worked 

often far into the night mending and making 

259 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

engines and studying all their ways, realized 
that he mnst start out on a new line. Putting 
aside earlier models, he faced the locomotive 
problem from the beginning. ^^ After a few 
months of experience and careful observation,'^ 
said Eobert Stephenson, *^my father directed 
his attention to an entire change in the con- 
struction and mechanical arrangements, and in 
the following year took out a patent, dated 
February 28th, 1815, for an engine which com- 
bined to a remarkable degree the essential 
requisites of an economical locomotive, — that 
is to say, few parts, simplicity in their action, 
and great simplicity in the mode by which 
power was communicated to the wheels sup- 
porting the engines. . . . Engines made by my 
father in 1818 after this model are still used 
to this day (1856) at Killingworth, carrying 
heavy coal-cars at about five or six miles an 
hour as economically as any since made.'' 

At first the locomotive was regarded only as a 
sort of a super-horse especially planned to haul 
coal. Then, in 1825, when merchants of Liver- 
pool and Manchester looked about for an im- 
proved way of shipping their goods, some of 

260 



GEOEGE STEPHENSON 

their men visited Killingwortli, saw Stephen- 
son's engine, and reported upon it so enthu- 
siastically that a company was formed to lay 
a railway between those two great centers of 
trade. 

Now a storm of opposition was raised by 
those interested in the canals. Land-owners 
would not allow surveys to be made. News- 
papers were hired and pamphlets were circu- 
lated to stir up prejudice against the new ven- 
ture. They said that the snorting locomotive, 
belching fire and smoke, would poison the air, 
kill birds, and so disturb the peaceful cattle and 
hens that they could not longer produce milk 
and eggs. Horses would be driven mad and the 
sparks sent broadcast would set fire to cottages, 
hayricks and woodland. ^'I was threatened to 
be ducked in the pond if I proceeded," said 
Stephenson, ^ ' and of course a great deal of the 
survey had to be taken by stealth when the peo- 
ple were at dinner. In a word, the country was 
up in arms against us.'' 

While a few daring newspapers boldly ven- 
tured the belief that through the use of steam- 
power on railroads cheaper and more rapid 

261 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

conveyance of both people and freight might 
be expected in the fntnre, the promoters of the 
Liverpool and Manchester road warned those 
who spoke in favor of its bill in Parliament not 
even to hint at the possibility of passenger- 



'^v;^^-^ 




An Eaily Eailway Coach 

trains. '^That would at once raise a host of 
enemies in the proprietors of coaches, post- 
chaises, and innkeepers, whose interests will 
be attacked,'' said Sir John Barrow, who was 
consulted as to the proper method of present- 
ing the case. ''Leave passengers and speed 

262 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

entirely ont of the Act ; if speed lias to be dis- 
cussed, keep it as low as possible, say &ve miles 
an hour." 

That question of speed was a terrible bug- 
bear. 

^^We can easily make twenty miles an hour," 
Stephenson had said. 

*^Why, that is more than twice as fast as 
the fastest mail coach," one of the Liverpool 
and Manchester company exclaimed. ^^You 
must not talk about such an unreasonable speed 
or you will spoil everything. Everybody will 
think you a maniac fit only for Bedlam. ' ' 

Civil engineers generally called the scheme 
of a locomotive railway absurd. ^^I remember 
the time," said George Stephenson, ^^when I 
had so few supporters that I hunted England 
over for an engineer to support my evidence 
before Parliament, and could find only one man, 
James "Walker, but was afraid to call that gen- 
tleman, because he knew nothing about rail- 
ways. ' ' 

The *^ Quarterly Review" printed an article 
in favor of the Liverpool and Manchester 
scheme because **an added means of carrying 

263 



COI^^QUESTS OF I]srVE:^TIO:N 

freight was an absolute necessity, '' but at the 
same time declared that, of course, the matter 
mentioned by some extravagant persons of 
passenger-carriages going at twice the speed 
of stage-coaches was too absurd to be taken 
seriously. *'We should as soon expect the peo- 
ple to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one 
of Congreve's rockets as to trust themselves 
to the mercy of a machine going at such a rate. 
We trust that Parliament in all railways that 
it may sanction will limit the speed to eight or 
nine miles an hour.'^ 

When George Stephenson was called before 
the committee of the House of Co?nmons he was 
put through a grilling examination. 

**0f course, when a body is moving upon a 
road, the greater the velocity the greater the 
momentum; is it not so?" asked one of the 
scientific ^ ^ experts. ' ' 

* ^ Certainly, " replied Stephenson. 

*^What would be the momentum of forty tons 
moving at the rate of twelve miles an hour!" 

^ ' It would be very great. ' ^ 

*^Have you seen a railroad that would stand 
that?" 

264 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

* ^ Where r' demanded the expert sternly. 

*^Any railroad that would bear going four 
miles an hour would bear the weight at twelve 
miles," replied Stephenson. ^^Let me explain. 
I dare say every person here has skated over 
ice or seen people skating, and they know the 
ice will bear them better when they go rapidly 
than it would if they went slower; when they 
go quick the weight in a measure ceases." 

So the self-taught mechanic struggled hero- 
ically to explain what all the distinguished en- 
gineers and public opinion generally held to be 
impossible. 

*'Is it because of that skating idea that you 
say the railroad is perfect!" laughed the ex- 
pert. 

**It is; and I mean to make it perfect," re- 
plied George Stephenson. 

But people generally declared with the ex- 
aminer that the inventor and his scheme rested 
alike ^^on very thin ice;" and if the matter of 
speed had been pressed at that time the bill 
would undoubtedly have lost out. 

At last, however, permission was gained to 
265 



COIs[QUESTS OF mVElSTTIOlSr 

lay the road, and the method of transportation 
was left to be settled at a later date. When 
the road was ready the matter was still in 
donbt. George Stephenson stood alone in ad- 
vocating traveling engines. The most cele- 
brated engineers held the locomotive idea in 
such contempt that they wonld not even examine 
what the Killingworth engines were accom- 
plishing. Should an nntanght workman, who 
had picked up everything he knew of mechanics 
and engineering in the Newcastle coal-pits put 
them all in the wrong and advise Parliament 
as to a new system of transportation for the 
country! 

George Stephenson earnestly pressed the 
claims of the traveling engine, however, against 
a system of stationary engines, and he so far 
prevailed that the directors of the road agreed 
to offer a prize of ^ve hundred dollars for the 
best locomotive that should on a given day be 
entered on the Liverpool and Manchester road, 
and fulfil certain necessary x^onditions in the 
most satisfactory manner. 

Here was an incentive to lead the mechanical 
geniuses of the country to a new consideration 

266 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

of- the possibilities of the locomotive, and when 
the day for the contest arrived four champions 
contended for the prize. Of these, the 
** Rocket,'' entered by George and Robert 
Stephenson, seemed to jndges and public alike 
to have little in its general appearance to com- 
mend it. The ^^ Novelty'' and the ^^Sans 
Pareil" were both picked out as winners. 

On October 6, 1829, several thousands of 
spectators, including many of the leading en- 
gineers and mechanics of the day, were gath- 
ered at Rainhill to witness the race. When the 
great moment came the ' ' Rocket ' ' was the only 
one ready for the start, so the judges called it 
out for an experimental trip. It ran twelve 
miles in about fifty-three minutes; it not only 
measured up to requirements but went beyond 
them. Not until the next day v/ere the favor- 
ites ^^ Novelty" and ^^Sans Pareil" ready. But 
even now, alas! there was trouble. The neat- 
looking, compact ^^ Novelty" depended upon a 
bellows to force air through the fire, and at the 
very moment of its appearance this bellows 
gave way. At the critical moment, too, some- 
thing went amiss with the boiler of the ^ ^ Sans 

267 



COISTQUESTS OF i]srvE]srTio:N' 

Pareil/^ To lessen the disappointment of the 
assembled crowd Stephenson again brought 
forward the ^ ^ Rocket, ' ' attached to it a car con- 
taining thirty persons, who, much to their won- 
der and delight, were carried smoothly over 
the two miles of trial road at the rate of from 
twenty-four to thirty miles an hour. The face 
of the world was changed. A miracle had come 
to pass; man was to conquer time and space 
at once, by this new means of travel. Excited, 
cheering people were at once ready to crown 
the master of the ^'Eocket,'' but the judges 
called for one more trial on the following morn- 
ing at eight o 'clock. 

Once more the doughty ^^Eockef — the dark 
horse that had suddenly turned favorite — was 
the only engine ready for the start. It first 
proved what it could do, dragging thirteen 
tons' weight in wagons. It made ten trips 
backward and forward over the two miles of 
trial track, some forty miles in all, including 
stoppages, in an hour and forty-eight minutes. 
Another series of ten trips were made in two 
hours and ten minutes. All conditions of safety 
and practical economy had been met, and the 

268 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

thing ran ! It ran at a rate that far outstripped 
conditions, and the limits of what had been 
deemed possible. 




Stephenson's ^'Eocket '' 

^^Well,'^ cried the elated directors of the 
road, ^'George Stephenson has surely delivered 
himself ! ' * 

It was characteristic of the modest inventor 
269 



COl^QUESTS OF I]SrVEI^TION 

that at the moment of his triumph, with cheer- 
ing crowds calling his name, and men of power 
and place eagerly waiting to take his hand, he 
should only say, ''Well, the locomotive is safe 
now; the day of better travel has come." 

With the opening of the Liverpool and Man- 
chester Eailway in 1830 a new day had dawned 
in the history of man. It seemed as if all the 
energy of the human race were being expended 
in laying roads. By the middle of the nine- 
teenth century a network of railways had 
spread over all Europe. Distances were all at 
once reduced to one tenth of what they had 
been. Men were brought into closer relation 
with each other. A new world order was built 
up through this easy and certain commerce of 
city with country, of nation with nation. 

''Let the country but make the railways, and 
the railways will make the country,'^ Stephen- 
son had said. In all of the road-making and 
nation-building that went forward everywhere 
the self-taught engine-wright and his son were 
chief or consulting engineers. The amount of 
work handled in those days would have been 
impossible to one less hardy, one whose nerves 

270 



GEOEGE STEPHENSON 

had not been tempered through years of strain 
to withstand discomfort and hardship. Many 
times the only sleep George Stephenson got was 
snatched in his traveling chaise ; then ^ ^ at break 
of day he would be at work, surveying until 
dark, and this for weeks in succession.'' The 
^^Eocket," too, he looked upon merely as a 
successful experiment, and constantly studied 
to make each new locomotive an improvement 
upon earlier models. 

But hard work and heavy responsibility did 
not steel the heart or spoil the disposition of 
the great engineer, who was always a simple, 
wholesome, sunny-tempered man. At a time 
when he was dictating to his secretary some 
thirty or forty letters a day — letters dealing 
with knotty problems of road-laying, tunnel- 
ing, and bridge-making, perhaps — he found 
time to write his son about a tragedy he had 
discovered in an unused room of his house. 
A window which had been so long left open that 
a pair of robins had made their nest and 
brought up a family under his roof, had one 
day been closed by a servant. Three days later 
Stephenson, whose attention was distracted 

271 



COTsTQUESTS OF INVElSTTIOISr 

from Ms work by the distress of a bird flutter- 
ing against one of bis windows, entered the 
room and came npon a nest where the young 
birds and the mother lay dead. Quickly open- 
ing the window, he took up the mate, that 
darted in only to fall exhausted at his feet. 
Warming it and feeding it tenderly, he coaxed 
it back to life for a while. '^But it could not 
get over the three days shut away from the 
prisoners on the other side of the glass,'' he 
added; ^^all its strength had gone into that 
desperate fluttering against our window.'' 

In his last years, when all that wealth and 
honor could bestow were his, Stephenson found 
his chief delight in his garden among his vege- 
tables, fruit-trees, and friendly birds. ^^Here 
my hobbies grow and make the most of my sun- 
shine for me," he would say. The wonder of 
the sunshine was to him the greatest of earth ^s 
miracles. Once, as he stood with a friend 
watching one of his big locomotives charging 
across the landscape under its lordly plume of 
smoke, he suddenly exclaimed: 

*^Sir, I have a poser for you. What is the 
power that is driving that train?" 

272 ^ 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 

*'Well/' said the other, ''I suppose one of 
your big engines. '^ 

^*But what drives the engine T' 

*^A canny Newcastle engineer, I might haz- 
ard.'^ 

^'Suppose I should say the power that drives 
the engine is just the light of the sunT' queried 
Stephenson. 

''How can that be!'' 

''It is nothing else," said the engineer. "It 
is light bottled up in the earth for tens of 
thousands of years, light absorbed by plants 
and vegetables, now made to work in that loco- 
motive tor great human purposes." 

The miracle he had seen wrought in the en- 
lightenment of men's minds was also a favorite 
topic. 

*'In less than ten years the same people who 
had cried out against the locomotive as a 
'poison-breathing, death-dealing monster' were 
begging to have the new railways pass their 
farms and country estates," he said. "The 
men who fought us most bitterly in Parliament 
now advertise their lands as 'near a railway 
station.' Only the other day, when a leading 

273 



COE'QUESTS OF mYEN^TIO]^' 

citizen addressed a meeting on the subject of 
a line to Ms town, he said: 'I have laid down 
for myself a limit to my endorsement to rail- 
ways — and the limit is I do not s^^ant them to 
come any nearer than to run through my bed- 
room with the bedposts for a station!' I also 
heard another gentleman say — it was the 
Marquis of Bristol — ^If necessary, the railroad 
can make a tunnel beneath my own drawing- 
room windows rather than be defeated in this 
project!' So you see," Stephenson added with 
his whole-hearted smile, '*you can't keep out the 
truth — or the sunlight. The thing we are too 
slow to understand to-day will come home to us 
to-morrow. ' ' 



274 



THE INVENTOR OF THE AIR-BRAKE 

Geokge Westinghouse (1846-1914) 

THE boy George Westinghouse seemed to 
give small promise of the man. He was a 
laggard in school and a laggard in the sports 
that are the delight of most boys. He had a 
curious love of lingering aimlessly about his 
father^s shop; and sometimes he seemed able 
to amuse himself unaccountably by playing with 
a few bits of wood for hours at a time. 

His mother gave him the name of his father, 
saying hopefully that perhaps he would prove 
a real junior in native power and gifts. George 
"Westinghouse senior was a man of weight in 
the community, the country of fertile farms 
and wide-awake farmers in Schoharie County, 
New York. Combining mechanical ability with 
shrewd business sense, he made various im- 
provements on threshing-machines and other 

275 



CONQUESTS OF mVENTIOIvT 

agricultural implements and manufactured them 
in his own shops. 

Young George Westinghouse seemed entirely 
without his father's practical sense. Never 
was there a colt who objected more to bit and 
bridle. 

**My first vivid recollection is of the way I 
hated all restraint/^ said Westinghouse once, 
smiling with reminiscent relish. ^ ' I had a fixed 
notion that what I wanted I must have. Some- 
how, that idea has not entirely deserted me 
throughout my life. I have always known what 
I wanted and how to get it. As a child, I got 
it by tantrums ; in mature years, by hard work. ' ' 

*^ Unless you can learn to run in harness you 
will never amount to anything, my son,'' his 
father would say. ''Now if you want to be of 
use in the shop, watch the men who know the 
ways of tools." 

But George soon tired of the humdrum story 
of saw and plane. At his own bench his ap- 
pointed tasks were left unfinished while he 
tried to construct a little engine of his own 
contriving, or perhaps a water-wheel that 

276 



GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 

should engage the hurrying stream in a fashion 
he happened to fancy at the moment. 

'^Trumpery — trumpery and nonsense!" said 
Mr. Westinghouse one day, and seizing George's 
latest pet invention he threw it on the scrap- 
heap. The boy's eyes blazed and he set his 
teeth hard to keep back the angry words. 

*^ Never mind, lad," said the foreman, sym- 
pathetically, after Mr. Westinghouse had 
passed beyond hearing. ^^ There 's a bit of a 
room up in the loft where the boss never goes. 
There you can have your things and play with 
them as you like, with no one to mind or med- 
dle." So George had his den where he went to 
work out his inventions. The time came when 
he designed and made the complete model of a 
rotary engine in this secret nook among the 
rafters. 

The way of the inventor is hard, even when 
he happens to be born the son of an inventor. 
For to be original means to be different and 
in that difference lies the possibility of much 
doubt and misunderstanding. George West- 
inghouse was *^ different" in that he seemed to 
take small interest in the proper concerns of 

277 



CONQUESTS OF i]srvEi^Tio:t;r 

Ms father's shops. A new threshing-machine 
had no power to kindle his enthusiasm. He 
also was a difficult jjupil in school. It baffled 
his instructors to understand why a youth who 
was so ready in mathematics and so keen in 
reasoning along certain lines should be so heavy 
and inexpressive when it came to most of the 
lore of books. 

One teacher alone realized that there was 
real power in the tongue-tied lad. ''He is the 
kind whose thought must take shape in action, 
not in words/' she said, with rare understand- 
ing. 

''We all owe more to certain of our teachers 
than we know," Mr. Westinghouse once said. 
"I am glad that I realized at the time how much 
a certain capable schoolmarm who was also a 
lovely and lovable woman meant in my life at a 
time when I needed the right sort of encourage- 
ment." 

Young Westinghouse was indeed the sort 
whose thought took shape in work, not in words. 
There we have the keynote to his character and 
his success; and his thought was of the kind 
that rebelled against fixed grooves, that thirsted 

278 



GEOEGE WESTINGHOUSE 

to go along paths of its own finding. His early 
faults that made his staid father shake his head 
were the sort that showed power of an nncom- 
mon sort. 

It was necessary, however, for him to know 
discipline, — to tame his spirit by learning what 
ends were worth while and to go after them 
by work, not by ^ tantrums. '^ His first real 
lessons were those he worked out alone in his 
loft w^orkshop when he found that a fellow 
never got anywhere with his best notions un- 
less he stuck to one thing until he conquered 
its difficulties and brought it to some conclu- 
sion. So he grew out of the fitful, impractical 
experimenter who made many more or less 
aimless beginnings, into the resolute workman 
and inventor who could hang on to a problem 
with a grip that never relaxed until he arrived 
at a satisfactory solution. 

More valuable lessons in self-mastery were 
learned through his experience in the Civil War, 
first as scout in a cavalry regiment, later as 
acting third assistant engineer in the navy, a 
position which he earned by his excellent mili- 
tary record and his mechanical skill. While on 

279 



CONQUESTS OF mVEI^TION 

board the Stars and Stripes he put in Ms odd 
hours at a lathe, turning out by its means a 
model of a sawbuck engine. For change of 
circumstances could not change his native bent. 
His interest in making machines was a part of 
.himself and not to be left behind with his fa- 
miliar tools in his den at home. 

Later, when the war was over, and George, 
obedient to his father's wishes, entered the 
scientific department of Union College, it was 
seen that the pressure of prescribed studies 
could not stamp out his original work. Even 
during the hours when he was supposed to be 
devoting himself to the irregularities of French 
verbs and German idioms he was making 
sketches on his cuffs of locomotives or engines 
of one sort or another. The president of his 
college undertook to bring this unsatisfactory 
student into line. 

**How do you like college, Westinghouse!" 
he began, with tactful cheerfulness. 

*^I dare say I should like it very well,'' re- 
plied George frankly, after a moment's hesita- 
tion, ^4f I had time to give my mind to my 
studies." 

280 



GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 

And then tlae astonished Dr. Hickok learned 
that here was not a case of an idle student, 
heedlessly wasting the golden opportunities of 
youth. ^^He has a mind of his own and the 
mind to use it," he advised George's father. 
''It will be useless to try to keep him in college 
at work in which he has no heart." 

So George was allowed a bench in his father's 
shop and he soon proved that he had learned 
to run in harness now, during working hours 
at least. Even the stern and exacting father 
admitted that he was a competent workman, 
who could turn out a neat job at the point 
needed. But still the real interest of the days 
was found in the '^den," where some ideas that 
had come to him during his experience in the 
navy were at this time taking shape in the 
rotary engine already referred to. 

It was always a mechanical problem, a prac- 
tical need, that engaged the attention of this 
young man whose thought 'Hook shape in 
work." Once when watching a wrecking-crew 
work painfully to get some derailed cars back 
on the track, the idea came to him for a car- 

281 



CO]S[QUESTS OF IIs^VEI^^TIOIS^ 

replacer which he reduced to definite form in a 
drawing before he went to sleep that night. 

George Westinghouse now had an opportu- 
nity to demonstrate his business ability, the 
power to size up a situation and ^'go after'' 
an object until it is attained. With little en- 
couragement from his father, he succeeded in 
getting a small amount of capital together from 
several investors in the city, formed a com- 
pany, and set about interviewing various rail- 
road men in order to introduce his car-replacer. 
Coming now in direct contact with railroad 
problems, he found himself one day face to face 
with another idea. He saw that of all parts of 
a track the frogs had to be most frequently 
replaced. This meant continual tearing up and 
patching that caused not only expense but delay 
to traffic. Westinghouse, then, made a cast- 
steel reviersible frog that was twenty times 
more durable than the cast-iron parts in use 
up to that time. But of course one couldn't 
build up a fortune on frogs whose virtue was 
their long life. ^Hien once roads were equipped, 
a new supply was not needed for a long time. 
It was well, therefore, that young Y\^estinghouse 

282 



GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 

did not rest his hopes here but was already 
seeking new worlds to conqner. 

Once more a need was presented dramatically 
through a railroad accident. One day, as West- 
inghouse stepped from his train to see why it 
had come to a sudden stop with no station in 




Westinghouse "Frog '* 

sight, he saw the ground strewn with broken 
cars and their hapless cargo. 

*^Must have been gross carelessness, — a col- 
lision on a straight, smooth stretch of road like 
this," he remarked. 

*^No," he was told, ^'the engineers saw each 
other and both tried to stop but could n 'i " 

283 



COIsTQUESTS OF mvE:^Tio]sr 

''Why not? Brakes out of order?" 

''No, but all the brakes and brakemen in the 
world can't bring a train to a standstill all at 
once. It takes time to signal to the brakemen 
and time again for them to clamp on the 
brakes. This swift iron age of ours must pay 
toll for its speed." 

This was the kind of challenge that fired 
George Westinghouse. A need without a rem- 
edy! Impossible! It was clear that the brakes 
which moved with such slowness on a fast train 
needed reforming. Could they not all move 
together by means of a chain that extended 
the length of the train? Might not some power, 
controlled by the engineer, pull the chain at 
need and clamp the brakes on all the wheels 
by one action? 

What power could handle and control the 
mighty chain that should run the length of a 
train of many cars? Steam? Could steam from 
the engine pass to the cylinders on the different 
cars that should take care of the slack of chain 
made by the operation of the brakes ? Even in 
summer the steam would be condensed long be- 

284 



GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 

fore it reached the last cars; in cold weather 
the condensed steam would freeze. 

Then it happened that the man and the idea 
of the hour were brought together as if by 
chance. George Westinghouse picked up a 
stray copy of a new magazine, which opened 
to an article that caught his attention, about a 
remarkable engineering feat, — the digging of 
the Mont Cenis tunnel eight miles through the 
Alps from France to Italy by means of rock 
drills operated by compressed air. George 
Westinghouse gave an exclamation of delight. 
He had found the key to his door of opportu- 
nity. Compressed air should be the power to 
work at the bidding of the engineer in setting 
the brakes. If the power of air could be sent 
through pipes thousands of feet to dig a pas- 
sage for man through the heart of a mountain 
range, it could pass unchanged from engine to 
caboose along any train of cars. Then the man 
whose thoughts took shape in action began at 
once to turn his idea into reality. The very 
day that he read about the tunneling of the 
Alps by means of compressed air he made the 
first drawings of his famous air-brake. 

285 



C0:NQUESTS of mVEISTTION 

A new idea must meet the right sort of man 
if it is to gain a foothold in the world. The 
man who works for the things of which people 
have never even dreamed must have the stern 
staying qualities of the pioneer. Even after 
Westinghouse had translated his idea into com- 
plete working drawings and models of the 
mechanism planned, it was long before he could 
make the railroad men entertain the notion up 
to the point of making an actual demonstration 
possible. The heads of one leading railway 
system after another turned a deaf ear to all 
pleadings for a practical test. And when at 
last a trial was granted and won, when West- 
inghouse was able to wire home the news of 
the dramatic trial trip which proved beyond 
question the value of the invention, his own 
father had so little faith in its practical success 
that he declined to invest any money in the 
venture. 

Fate, however, was more kindly. The time 
had come for the air-brake and a very pretty 
drama was staged by fortune for the man of 
the hour. There was the train equipped for the 
trial trip with officials of the Panhandle Eail- 

286 



GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 

road and a few invited guests from other com- 
panies in the rear car. There was Westinghouse, 
tense but confident, looking over the apparatus 
in the cab. He looked over the engineer, too, 
and saw a clear-eyed, capable young man. 
^^Well," he said, by way of parting caution, 
*'all I ask is that you give this a fair show. 




The Air-Brake 

Good luck to you!'' This with a firm, hearten- 
ing hand-shake that left in the engineer's grasp, 
together with the will to do his utmost for 
this new brake entrusted to him, the surprising 
bonus of a fifty-dollar note. And his smile of 
reassurance to the astonished master of the 
engine gave no suspicion of the truth that the 
inventor had given his last dollar. 

287 



CONQUESTS OF I]SrVENTIO:t^ 

With the stage all set for the great act, for- 
tune now pulled the strings. A deaf drayman, 
despite all warnings, started to drive his wagon 
over the track, when his frightened horse made 
the matter more desperate for the frenzied 
driver by throwing him across the rails in front 
of the rapidly approaching locomotive. The 
engineer saw the danger ahead. Now for the 
new brake. A powerful twist at the valve, and 
the compressed air rushed through the pipes 
to the cylinders under the cars, and the brakes 
were clapped to their wheels with a mighty jerk. 
The train came to a dead stop just four feet 
short of the helpless drayman. A life was saved 
and the new air-brake was the hero of the day. 

Given the practical ability and character 
which Westinghouse brought to his task, the 
triumph of his invention was now assured. 
When it had to hold its place against competi- 
tors he was able to meet varying conditions tri- 
umphantly. His quick-acting air-brake proved 
its worth on long freight-trains as well as on 
passenger-cars against all electrically operated 
devices. 

But this success was to Westinghouse but the 
288 




Photo copyright by Gessford 



George Westinghouse 



GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE 

means of going on to further achievement. He 
turned his attention to a block system of safety 
signals where the warning is automatically 
flashed by electricity while compressed air does 
the heavy work of signaling. Then the matter 
of various electric projects for lighting, for 
street railways, for harnessing the inexhaustible 
energy of Niagara as a source of electric power 
for millions of people, engaged his attention. 
Westinghouse was a name to conjure with in 
the industrial world. 

Always thinking in acts, and, when the door 
closed on one achievement, looking to the future 
with the cry, *^Now for the next job!" George 
"Westinghouse went on from one success to an- 
other. Practical American that he was, in his 
years of triumphant service for man in our Age 
of Steel, making its speed safe and its ways 
sure, he recalls to our thought the old saying: 
*< "Words are the daughters of earth; Deeds are 
the sons of heaven." 



289 



THE STEEL AGE 



. . . Like paste from a tube^ a thin rope of white-hot 
steel emerged from a shapeless machine that crouched squat 
on the iron floor, and with a breath of heat disappeared in 
the breast of another monster that trembled with the rever- 
beration of a hundred hammers. And faster than the 
hand of my watch could count the seconds, a hail of railroad 
spikes, still glowing, poured finished from the vitals of the 
uncouth machines. Plates of steel for the flanks of ships 
which will some day transport the wares of a trading 
world. Rails and spikes to carry high over mountain 
passes the flitting trains that make distant cities one. Bolt, 
rivet and girder for the towering building. Steel, steel for 
its multifold destinies, here it is born in heat and labor. 
Steel for an age of steel. 

Joseph Husband : America at Work. 



THE STEEL AGE 

FKOM the Golden Age — the happy childhood 
of the world when man lived in a garden of 
glorious hopes in care-free enjoyment of a life 
of wonder and adventure — to the Steel Age, our 
present workaday world of big cities, of turning 
wheels and toiling armies of machine-workers, 
is the whole story of human struggle and pro- 
gress, from the dawn of history to the high noon 
of to-day. Our modern life is truly built upon 
steel foundations like our bridges and skyu 
scrapers. Our locomotives, monsters built of 
wrought-iron and steel, must have steel rails to 
travel on. Speed called for steel that is harder 
than iron and at the same time more flexible. 

If the steam-engine had been dreamed of in 
the early days of earth it could never have be- 
come a reality without sheet-iron. That was 
made possible in the eighteenth century when 
the first blast-furnace came into use, where 

293 



COISTQUESTS OF mVENTIO:N' 

coke was burned, the iron ore smelted, and a 
stream of slag driven off from the purified iron. 
Eolled sheet-iron, the only substance that the 




Eastern Clay Furnace with Goat-skin Bellows used in 
production of the famous Damascus Blades 

world had yet won that was capable of holding 
steam, was first used in 1728. Eolled rods and 
bars were not made until 1783; and the first 

294 



THE STEEL AGE 

steam-hammer which made the forging of iron 
and steel in great quantities possible was in- 
vented as late as 1838. 

Before this time iron, which was coaxed from 
its ore by the use of wood charcoal, could be 
handled only in small masses. The iron-worker 
who wrought it into shape was a skilled crafts- 
man. The members of the iron and steel guilds 
of the Middle Ages formed an industrial clan 
as proud of their aristocracy of brawn as any 
knight in armor of his noble lineage. No lad 
from a peasant's cottage or son of a weaver, 
miller, tailor, tanner, or musician, could hope 
to win a place beside the mighty men of iron. 

But in the Steel Age monster machines are 
the aristocrats. Among them men are as pig- 
mies. A steel converter, a sort of huge iron 
pot twice as tall as a man and weighing more 
than five hundred men, can be manipulated by 
a half-grown boy. It was the Bessemer process, 
developed in 1856, of making cheap steel in vast 
quantities that prepared the way for the twen- 
tieth-century life that we accept as a matter of 
course. Then followed in 1864 the open-hearth 
method, where tons of white-hot steel boil and 

295 



COI^QUESTS OF Ils]"VEl^TIO]^ 

bubble in a hugh volcano-like container from 
whicli it is dipped out by a mighty ^ ^ ladle, '^ — a 
sort of Titan caldron it appears to the awe- 
struck onlooker. In this latter-day man-made 
Etna which may be seen in cities like Pitts- 
burgh or Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the twen- 
tieth-century Vulcan forms the bones and 
sinews of our great cities, of our railways and 
our ships of iron and steel. The modern ocean 
liner, a floating palace weighing fifty thousand 
tons, tells the whole story. In the days before 
the conquest of iron and steel in the nineteenth 
century no ship of much more than two tons 
crossed the seas. 

But it is not only in ^^ bigness' that we must 
measure the worth of the Age of Steel. The big 
machines that save labor give many opportuni- 
ties for larger, richer life to many men. Th6y 
can, it is true, make death as well as life, — con- 
struct bridges and railroads to win the wilder- 
ness for man, or battleships and cannon to tear 
down in a moment the work of years. So they 
can make a man of brain as well as brawn, — 
with heart and mind set free to make a life as 
well as a living — or unthinking, machine-like 

296 



THE STEEL AGE 

workers that the wheels of progress grind down 
and fling to the scrap-heap. 

Will the Age of Steel prove itself by the men 
it makes, — finely tempered, trne as steel, strong 
to do and to endure? That would be the real 
alchemy, in which the baser metals are turned 
not merely into golden fortunes, but also into 
happy human lives. That would mean the dawn- 
ing of a new Golden Age. 



297 



THE STOEY OF BESSEMER STEEL 

William Kelly (1811-1888) 

WE live in the midst of mighty forces, but, 
like children, we are very wasteful. 
Little by little, however, we learn how to use to 
better advantage the riches that we have al- 
lowed to slip like golden sand through our fin- 
gers as we sat building our play-houses and 
forts on the shore of life. The great source of 
power is the sun. Without it the wheels of life 
would soon stop moving. Yet how much of it is 
every day going to waste! Some day one of 
the earth children will spring up and harness 
a part of this force, store it, and put it to work 
where it can do the most good. 

Air is another of the great gifts that we took 
for granted and let go to waste. ''Free as 
air,'' we said, and failed to use our freedom. 
Then the day came when a man who discovered 
how to use this gift in a new way made a fortune 

298 



WILLIAM KELLY 

out of the air-brake. Compressed air does much 
heavy work for us to-day. This is the story of 
the way in which another use of air was dis- 
covered. It was found that air might serve as 
fuel in turning molten iron into steel. In Amer- 
ica, "William Kelly, and in England, Henry 
Bessemer, worked out this fashion of making 
steel, which is known as the Bessemer process. 
In 1846, in Eddyville, Kentucky, not far from 
Cincinnati, there was a brisk, energetic iron- 
worker named Kelly. ^ ^ He ^s a smart man but a 
bit of a crank, '^ people said: '^too many ideas 
to make money out of any one of them.'' But 
he made good iron pots and pans ; the ' ' Kelly 
kettles" were well known throughout the South. 
This is the way his good wrought iron was made. 
In a furnace — ^his finery fire, he called it — a 
mass of pig-iron (about fifteen hundred pounds) 
was placed between two layers of charcoal. The 
charcoal was burned in large quantities, — in 
such large quantities, indeed, that the supply of 
wood to be obtained near the iron-works was 
rapidly being exliausted. If more wood char- 
coal had to be brought from a distance it would 
mean good-by to profits, and failure. 

299 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTIOI^ 

But in the very nick of time, in the hour of 
need, Kelly made his discovery that was to mean 
both economy of fuel and bigger results. He 
was sitting before his fire one day when he 
saw something that filled him with wonder, — 
then, as he guessed something of its meaning, 
with speechless delight. 

What was it that he saw? Only a tiny pool of 
melted iron that was white-hot and luminous at 
the edge of the yellow molten mass. At that 
place he saw that the blast of air had made the 
metal it struck much hotter than the rest. At 
that point it had become incandescent without 
the use of charcoal, through the power of air 
alone. 

Then it was that a knowledge of some things 
besides Kelly kettles led to a great discovery. 
He knew of what air and iron are composed. He 
understood that when the blast of air struck 
the molten metal the oxygen in the air worked 
upon the carbon and other impurities in the iron 
ore until they were almost entirely burned out, 
leaving the pure ore behind. ' ^ Oxygen, the mys- 
terious element which gives life to all creatures, 
yet which burns up and destroys all things ; oxy- 

300 



WILLIAM KELLY 

gen, which may be had without money in infinite 
quantities — ^was now to become the creator of 
cheap steel.'' 




A Eoman Blast Furnace on a hill-top to catch the 
- breeze 

Kelly was intoxicated with his discovery. He 
walked about as if on air. He could talk of noth- 

301 



CONQUESTS OF mVEE^TION 

ing but the marvel of air, — air that would bum 
in a furnace. People who had before thought 
him a bit of a crank were now sure that he had 
lost his wits. 

* * Come and see, ' ' he said ; ^ ' if seeing is believ- 
ing I '11 give you something to think about.'' 

In his joy over the truth that he had found 
he thought nothing of guarding his discovery 
or taking out a patent. A group of iron-work- 
ers, the village doctor, and a few others gath- 
ered about his furnace. Into the melted pig- 
iron they saw the air blown and the molten metal 
begin to whiten and seethe like milk in a sauce- 
pan. Then, after some of this white-hot liquid 
was cooled a bit of it was seized by a blacksmith, 
flung on an anvil, and hammered into a horse- 
shoe. The thing had happened. Stubborn pig- 
iron had been made obedient to the hammer 
without the use of fuel. 

^'Surely the thing was too absurd," writes 
Herbert N. Casson, in his '* Romance of Steel." 
'^Seeing was not believing. ^Some crank '11 be 
burnin ' ice next, ' said one. The iron men shook 
their heads and went home; to boast in after 

302 



WILLIAM KELLY 

years that they had seen the first public produc- 
tion of Bessemer steel in the world. '^ 




Baising the lump in early days in America. 

But for the time Kelly and his big idea seemed 
crushed. 

^'What 's this wildcat thing we hear about 
making steel out of airT' people said. *^We 

303 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTIO:^^ 

want it understood that we'll have nothing but 
good, old-fashioned, solid steel." 

^ ^ Come down to earth and conduct your busi- 
ness in a safe and sane fashion, or I'll ask you 
to pay back the money I Ve lent you," threat- 
ened his father-in-law, who had furnished the 
capital for the iron-works. 

It seemed then as if Kelly settled down quite 
satisfactorily. His business went along straight 
conservative lines and confidence in the ** Kelly 
kettles" was restored. But back in the forest, 
with all the secrecy of a moonshiner, he set up 
the converter for his ^'pneumatic process," as 
he styled it. There, with the help of two Eng- 
lish iron-workers, he would turn the magic blast 
through the cylinder and then ladle in the 
melted pig-iron. It was hard always to get a 
blast of the right strength ; if the power failed, 
the iron flowed through the air-holes and 
clogged them up. 

The first converter was soon replaced by one 
with improvements which saved both time and 
fuel and taught him other valuable lessons which 
led to further improvements and new gains. 
Seven converters were installed one after the 

304 




^ J'lil.rji r "-I l(_ii(_e -MuniL'y 

In the Bessemer process the converter, a steel vessel about 12 feet 
in diameter and 20 feet high, is tipped over on its side and molten 
pig-iron is run into its mouth; then it is turned upright and a blast 
of air is sent through it 




© Popular Science Monthly 

In the open-hearth process the molten steel lies 18 inches deep 
on a bed about 40 feet long by 16 feet wide. Here the current of hot 
gas and air is shown being forced above and around the molten mass. 
Ore of less purity than that used in the Bessemer process is success- 
fully dealt with by the open-hearth method 



WILLIAM KELLY 

other in the forest hiding-place and still the in- 
ventor was not satisfied that he had solved his 
problem. 

When in 1856 Kelly learned that an English 
inventor, Henry Bessemer, had applied to the 
United States Patent Office for a patent for the 
pneumatic process, the Irishman and the Yan- 
kee in him rose together to defend his rights 
and Americans claim to the honor of the inven- 
tion. He had little difficulty in proving that his 
^^air-boiling" method, as the neighbors called 
it, had been a matter of town talk ten years 
before Bessemer came forward with his claim, 
and the American patent was given to Kelly. It 
was the Englishman, however, who made the 
new process steel a commercial success and 
through it a fortune of ten million dollars and 
the honor of knighthood. In America, even, he 
was lauded as the original inventor by iron- 
masters who hoped to avoid paying a royalty to 
Kelly; and the process to-day bears his name. 
But Kelly was not unrewarded. The one-time 
crank was now called a genius and his royalties 
in all amounted to half a million dollars. 

305 



COJSTQUESTS OF mVEIsrTIO:^' 

What, then, is Bessemer steel? It is not like 
the old-fashioned steel which can be hardened 
and tempered to form tools and cutlery. It is 
*^mild'^ steel (contains less carbon); is strong, 
easily cnt or bent into any required form, and 
is, at the same time, free from brittleness. It 
is, indeed, a sort of wrought-iron (without the 
mixture of slag) that is ideally suited to the 
making of rails and the beams of bridges and 
buildings, as well as engines and machinery. 
The Age of Steel was made possible by this air- 
boiling process which is pictured in L. W. 
Spring's *'Non Technical Chats on Iron and 
Steel:'' 



One sees, a little 'dinky' engine come shooting into the 
converter building with its ladle of molten iron from the 
"mixer". With America's time-saving routine not a single 
minute is lost while emptying the metal into the converter, 
now in a horizontal position. Almost before the ladle is out 
of the way, the converter swings to the upright position 
with the blast already on. Reddish-brown smoke and a 
shower of sparks come from the converter. These grad- 
ually develop into a flame. After from three to five min- 
utes half of the silicon and manganese have been burned 
out. If the temperature of the metal and other conditions 
have become right the carbon then begins to burn. This 
gives a change in the nature of the flame, which becomes 

306 



WILLIAM KELLY 

large and of a dazzling whiteness. An experienced blower 
can judge through every period of the operation of the 
condition of his metal and just how things are progressing. 
After some minutes the flame begins to waver and later 
drops, i.e. there is scarcely a flame at all. 

Now the converter is lowered and enough 
carbon, manganese, and silicon put in to give 
the steel the required hardness and flexibility. 
Then this molten Bessemer steel is ladled out 
by means of mighty caldrons into ingot molds 
which are waiting on railway trucks to carry 
the ingots to the ' ' stripper, ' ' which removes the 
molds, leaving behind the white-hot ingots of 
two tons each. These are lowered into soaking 
pits heated by gas, where the ingots are brought 
to an even temperature and consistency, when 
they are sent to the rolling-mill. There the 
white-hot ingots are rolled, drawn out, and 
transformed into steel plates, rails, and beams 
for bridges or buildings, or some of the many 
other things of our new steel age. Taking the 
place of cast-iron, which cracked, and wrought- 
iron, which bent, under strain, this new metal, 
which is merely tempered iron — that is, iron 
that has been rendered at once hard and flex- 

307 



CONQUESTS OF mVENTIOE' 

ible— provided at the right moment the material 
for making the mighty engines and machines 
that the inventions of Watt and his successors 
called into being. 

What a place is the steel-mill! Here is a 
playground where the Titan forces that tossed 
about in the geologic past the mighty boulders 
and rolled up mountain ranges leaving the scars 
of sheer abysses, and shadowy canons, might 
find rare sport in the world of to-da}^. An ingot 
of two tons reaches the press at white heat, 
sending out a dazzling light that breaks in rays 
like sunbeams on the walls and roof. There is 
the steam-hammer (which does the smaller 
work by drop-forging) with a ^^ falling weight" 
of from five to twenty-five tons. But this is a 
mere trifle compared with the hydraulic press, 
which can bring to bear a pressure of from 
two thousand to five thousand tons in the final 
stage of the forging. 

Can you hear something of the epic story of 
steel in the singing rails that herald the onrush 
of a giant locomotive weighing more than half 
a million pounds'? Can you see the triumphal 
arch of the conqueror in the bridge that has 

308 



WILLIAM KELLY 

been flung across space to allow the distance- 
defying monster to leap from shore to shore? 
That, too, like the lofty buildings of great cities, 
writes in an impressive skyline the marvelous 
story of steel. 



309 



MACHINES FOE THE MH^LIONS 
Henby Foed (1863- ) 

Round as a biscuit, 

Busy as a bee, 
The prettiest little thing, 

You ever did see! 

HOW many children have said in their 
happy singsong- this riddle-rhyme of the 
watch, — -the thing that is to them the chief 
pocket-wonder of their world. All grown-ups 
know the power of the *' tick-tick ' ' to amuse and 
as a most particular favor sometimes open up 
the magic case to let a small friend ^'see the 
wheels go round." To all children the sight of 
the tiny wheels is a wonderful thing; to some 
children it is school and holiday rolled into one, 
— the beginning of their real interest in life and 
their life-work. 

Such a boy was Eli Whitney, who on one 
thrilling day when his father was at church 

310 



HENEY FOKD 

dared to take that gentleman ^s precious watch 
to pieces. He had at stolen moments studied 
the little wheels and dreamed about the way 
they fitted together and worked. Now he longed 
ahove everything else to take them apart, touch 
them one by one, and learn the trick of each 
which was the secret of the marvelous team- 
work that ticked off seconds and hours. That 
watch was Eli Whitney's first real school. He 
learned as he struggled with its wheels the first 
principles of machinery, and the longing to 
know more. That is the story of the cotton- 
gin. 

It will be remembered that George Stephen- 
son also learned from clocks and watches many 
things which he later put to use in the making 
of locomotives. This is the story of another boy 
whose first school was a watch. From it he 
learned to love the ways of machines. It may 
be said that the idea of the Ford motor-car and 
the factory where everything goes *4ike clock- 
work'' came from a watch. 

Little Henry Ford was looking with delight 
at the real watch which a boy friend was ex- 
hibiting proudly. Both boys forgot that it was 

311 



COE-QIJESTS OF nsrVENTIOE" 

Sunday and that their mothers expected them 
to follow along properly into church. 

^'Oh, ho!" said Henrys ^^your watch isn't 
going. Let me see if I can't set it off." Here 
was the chance he had longed for as far back 
as he could remember, — to see the inside of a 
watch. Fearful but fascinated, Will Bennett 
handed over his treasure and, forgetting church 
and possible punishment in store at home, they 
went together to the shop of the Bennett farm. 
There Henry made a small screw-driver by fil- 
ing a shingle nail and set off on the big adven- 
ture. Church was over, dinner time came and 
went, the long spring afternoon was drawing 
toward evening, and still Henry was v/orking 
with the tiny cogs and springs. The anxious 
owner of the watch, torn between despair and 
hope, was held in leash by Henry's enthusiasm. 

'*You said you 'd put it together again all 
right ! " he was saying for the hundredth time 
when their anxious parents descended upon 
them. 

*^An' so I would if folks 'd only let me be 
till I could finish!" Henry declared hotly. He 
had, indeed, fitted most of the parts together 

312 



HENEY FOED 

and he passionately longed to prove, by setting 
tliem going, tliat they were in working order. 

*'I suppose, '' Henry Ford said years after- 
ward in recalling that great day, * ' that we came 
in for all the punishment that was thought right 
and proper. But I have forgotten about that. 
"What I do remember is the way I began to 
experiment with all the clocks and watches with- 
in reach. Only my father's watch was sacred. 
Every clock in the house shuddered when it saw 
me coming.'' 

The ordinary run of the farm tasks had little 
charm for Henry. They were always the same 
tiresome round with nothing new to work out. 
In the farm shop, however, he found something 
more to his taste. Here were tools like so many 
hands trained to special work, needing only the 
mind to direct their effort. 

Tool-power was a wonderful thing. He set 
himself to the task of learning to use it. It 
was a great day when he turned out a device for 
opening and closing gates. Every time his 
father was saved from jumping off the wagon 
to swing back a gate he should realize that 

313 



COE'QUESTS OF mVEKTION 

something worth while came of ^ ' fussing about 
in the shop.'' 

When Henry was fourteen his world was sud- 
denly changed by the death of his mother. In 
that busy home, where the daily round had 
always gone with the happy regularity of clock- 
work, the mainspring was broken. Now the 
farm duties were empty of all interest and the 
hours that the boy could spend in the shop 
seemed the only real part of his days. From 
scraps of old plows, harrows, and wagon tires, 
he made a small steam-engine that really went. 
He had a moment of rare triumph when he 
charged down that pasture lot at ten miles an 
hour, tooting an ear-splitting whistle, but no 
one seemed particularly impressed except the 
frightened cows. 

The mechanical journals which he devoured 
as other boys do tales of adventure pointed the 
way to big opportunities in the iron-works at 
Detroit. He dreamed of going there to seek 
his fortune with the things he loved, great 
engines that did the tasks of giants. Then there 
came a day in his sixteenth year, when spring 
Vv^as in the air, that he suddenly decided to take 

314 



HENRY FORD 

matters in his o\vii hands and make his dreams 
come true. His seat at school was empty that 
day. 

The train that drew into Detroit gave a 
long whistle of triumph as if to proclaim that 
the great adventure of living was fairly begun 
for one boy at least. It did not take him long 
to make his way to the factory where steam- 
engines were made. 

*^I 'm looking for a job,'' he said to the big, 
red-shirted foreman. 

Something in the determined voice made itself 
felt over the roar of the machinery and the 
hurry and confusion of the works. The fore- 
man stopped long enough to look the boy over 
and to recall that an extra helper or two would 
come in handy just then. ^^Come to work to- 
morrow. I '11 see what you can do,'' he said. 
^^Pay two and one half a week." 

For a number of weeks Henry worked in the 
machine-shop from seven till six, sometimes at 
the forges, sometimes making castings or as- 
sembling the parts of the engine. In the eve- 
ning he worked for two hours at a jeweler's, 
mending clocks and watches. For of course it 

315 



CONQUESTS OF INVENTION 

was impossible, even in those good old days of 
cheap living, to find a clean, wholesome place to 
eat and sleep for two and a half dollars a week. 
As it was, the boy must often have missed the 
abundance of the farm kitchen as he did the 
fresh country air and the home faces, but his 
work had always for him the zest of adventure, 
because there was always some fresh problem 
to be solved. 

His father, who had followed him to Detroit 
and talked with him earnestly, said: ^'If this is 
the school of your choice, stick to it as long as 
you want. You know where your home is ; it '11 
be there when 3^ou find yourself wanting some- 
thing besides engines/' 

As the days went by an idea came again and 
again to the young machinist, who had never 
known what it was to work like a machine. Al- 
ways on the alert to discover how to do some- 
thing in a better way, he saw that there was 
waste of time and effort at many points in the 
great factory. 

^'See here," he said one day to the man next 
him; ^'nothing 's ever made twice alike. We 
waste a lot of time and material assembling 

316 



HENRY FORD 

these engines. That piston-rod will have to be 
made over; it won't fit the cylinder." 

**0h, well/' was the easy-going reply, '4t 
won't take long to fit it. We do as well as 
'we can." 

But Heniy had in his mind a factory where 
there would be no waste of man-power or of 
tool-power ; where each worker would be so per- 
fectly fitted to his job that there were no false 
motions. One day when he had in his hand a 
new watch for which he had paid three dollars, 
he had a vision, — a vision of a plant where 
everything went like clockwork, ^ ^ a gigantic ma- 
chine taking in bars of steel at one end and turn- 
ing out completed watches at the other." 

i i There would be a fortune in it, ' ' he exulted, 
^^and for the millions watches like this in my 
hand for fifty cents ! ' ' 

It is possible that people might to-day be 
using Ford watches at home instead of riding 
about in Ford cars if circumstances had not 
called the dreamer back to the home acres at 
this time. His father was ill and there was need 
of his hand at the helm. Then when there was 
no longer the same need, he still stayed, for 

317 



C0:NQUESTS of mVENTION 

there was a country girl who made home ways 
seem better than anything else, even better than 
the ways of smooth-running machines. 

But in a home of his own on a thriving farm, 
he sat by the lamp in the evenings reading the 
magazines that told about the world of fac- 
tories and machine ideas. He had seen some- 
thing about a Frenchman who had invented a 
horseless carriage, run by an engine. The idea 
fascinated him. 

Not long afterward, on a visit to Detroit, he 
saw a steam-driven fire-engine go puffing down 
the street. He stared at it as if he had never 
seen anything of the sort before. ^'Such 
waste,'' he muttered to himself. '^More than 
half the power used in carrying that huge boiler 
of water about!" He couldn't forget that 
steam-engine. It had to be heavy because one 
couldn't have driving-steam without boiling 
water. How, then, was one to get away from 
the weight and the waste of power! Could the 
engine be run in some other way! What of 
these gas-engines that were being tried in some 
places! Could a simple, practical engine be 
run by gasolene! 

318 



HENRY FOED 

This idea filled his days now. While he 
worked in the fields he was dreaming of gas- 
engines put to work for people in a way to 
help most. 

^'I 'm going to leave farming and go back to 
the city, where I can have a chance to make my 
engine/' he announced one day to his wife. 

Of course it seemed a wild thing to do. But 
as it was plain that he would think of nothing 
else, one had to make the best of it. After all, 
he would soon find out if there were anything 
in his scheme, and either finish it or throw it 
on the scrap-heap. So his wife set herself cheer- 
fully to the task of moving to the big city. 

Several years passed, — years full of hard 
work, first as engine-doctor and then as one of 
the subordinate managers in the Edison elec- 
tric-lighting ]3lant of Detroit. But they were 
years of hopeful adventure, because the engine 
idea was taking shape in iron and steel. Many 
times Henry Ford 's enthusiasm kept him in the 
work-shed at the rear of his house all night. 

''How could you stand that sort of thing when 
you had to be at work next morning?" Ford 
was asked. 

319 



CON^QUESTS OF mVE^TIOE" 

*'I was never sick/' he replied. "It isn't 
overworking that breaks men down, if they have 
heart in their work. Overplaying and overeat- 
ing make most of the trouble." 

It was a queer-looking thing to have taken so 
many months of planning and contriving, that 
first engine. A piece of pipe salvaged from the 
scrap-heap at the Edison plant made its one 
cylinder. Four antiquated bicycle wheels fitted 
with extra heavy rims and pneumatic tires were 
mounted on a light buggy frame made, like all 
the rest, from odds and ends of material. But 
it went ! 

It was three o'clock on a dark winter morning 
when that first Ford car chugged out of its shed 
on its first journey into the world. The ground 
was covered with slush and the rain came dow^i 
in torrents, but the moment was one of triumph. 
The engine worked! Each throb and jerk was 
a promise of success, but also a call to further 
effort. There was a long road ahead. 

*^I knew my real work with the car was just 
begun, ' ' he explained afterward. * ' I had to get 
capital somehow, start a factory, get people 
interested, — everything. Besides, I saw a 

320 




First American automobile, Duryea's model, in National Museum, 
Washington, D.C. 



HENRY FORD 

chance for a lot of improvements in that car/' 
As we have seen, Henry Ford was not the 
inventor of the gas-engine. He had read in his 
machinist's journal of the work of Lenoir in 
France, Otto in Germany, and others. The 
Frenchman Lebon, in 1804, proposed firing 
compressed gas and air by an electric spark. 
In America, Charles E. Duryea (a bicycle 
worker like the Wright brothers) made in 
Springfield, Massachusetts, the first American 
automobile. A man named Haynes — of Kokomo, 
Indiana — was a close second. The honor of 
the invention of the gas-engine which has made 
possible both the automobile and the aeroplane 
belongs to no one man. 

Ford was one of a number of men who were 
struggling to make practical gasolene motors. 
He differed from the others, however, in that 
his goal was a cheap car for the many, not an- 
other luxurious carriage for the fev/. ^'I 
thought the more people who had a good thing 
the better. My car was going to be cheap, so the 
man that needed it most could afford to buy it,'' 
he said. ^'Then I saw it put to work on the 
farm, saving many from the grinding toil I 

321 



COE'QtESTS OF mVEj^TTION 

knew at first-hand. '^ He succeeded, as all the 
world knows, in making his car and in building 
up the largest automobile business in America. 
What was the secret of his success? 

^'Ford is a genius," declared Edison; ^* there 
is no other way of explaining him. I put to 
him a problem of the laboratory, and while men 
with the technical training of experts calculate 
and differ. Ford goes through the thicket of 
non-essentials, straight to the point, as if by 
instinct. So it is with the organization of his 
business: his genius for human engineering 
was shown in the work with and for his 
workers." 

Some might see the reason for Henry Ford's 
success in his single-mindedness. As the mak- 
ing of his engine had been the mainspring of 
his existence for ten years, so the ideal of a 
business with everything as perfectly adjusted 
as clockwork grew and developed. The prin- 
ciple of standardization which he had once 
thought of applying to the making of cheap 
watches was now applied to turning out motor- 
cars and tractors for the millions. There was 
to be no room for waste. Every part was to be 

322 



HENEY FORD 

machined to exact size, so that no fitting after- 
ward in the assembling-room should be re- 
quired. When the machine ^^ found itself/' it 
would be seen that all parts fitted together to 
the fraction of an inch. As the Ford engine 
worked, so also did the standardization idea. 

So, too, was Ford's intelligent generalship in 
the management of his army of workers a factor 
in his success. . 

**Does it pay,'' says Henry Ford, *'to give 
the workers a chance for a contented life? 
What makes better workers must make better 
work and better business. The whole world is 
like a machine, every part as important as every 
other part. We should all work together, not 
against each other. Anything that is good for 
all the parts of the machine is good for each 
one of them." 

What is the *^ conquest" of the cheap motor- 
car? Ask the man in the street who uses it in 
his business and who tours in it during his holi- 
day hours. Making a life is as important clear- 
ly as making a living, and the automobile helps 
with both by bringing the country close to the 
city, — ^making it possible for the dwellers in 

323 



CONQUESTS OF mVENTION 

streets to taste the joys in the open, and for 
farmers to cover in an hour the journey to town 
and city that formerly took half a day. 

The railroad broke down the barriers that 
separated city from city and town from town. 
The motor-car has carried further this work of 
destroying distance and adding to life by the 
saving of time and toil. 



324 



THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR 

Samuel Piekpont Langley (1834-1906), Wilbur 

Wright (1867-1912), and Orville Wright 

(1871- ) 

A SMALL boy was lying on a hilltop watch- 
ing the flight of a sea-gull. 

^^How does he do itf he wondered aloud. 
' * How is it that he can float about like that with- 
out any effort? It is only when he begins to 
mount into the air that he flaps his wings ; now 
he is hardly moving them at all. He is held up 
by the air just as a kite is. " 

This was not the first time that young Samuel 
Langley had watched the sea-gulPs flight. In 
fancy he, too, was soaring, held up magically by 
a wonderful understanding of the power of 
the air. 

^ ^ There must be something about the air that 
makes it easy," he pondered. ^'The birds have 
the secret, but I can't even guess it!" 

325 



CO:^QUESTS OF mVENTIOK 

That night at dinner he surprised the family 
by saying suddenly : ' * Birds swim in the air as 
fish swim in the water. We have learned the 
secret of letting water hold ns up ; why can't we 
do the same with the ocean of the air?" 

^^Wliat of good old Gravity, my sonT' teased 
his father. ' ^ That law is still alive and active, 
is it not?" 

^^But," persisted the boy, "the hawks and 
the gulls are heavier than the air. There is 
nothing of the balloon sort about them." 

"But they have wings, my boy, and they 
know how to fly," returned Mr. Langiey, look- 
ing at the boy's puckered brow with amusement. 

"Well, why should it be such a joke, — the idea 
of a person learning to fly!" returned Samuel. 
"Why shouldn't people make a sort of airship 
with wings and sail through the air?" 

Many boys besides young Langiey had 
dreamed of winning wings. Indeed, in all ages 
of the world people have longed to slip the 
moorings that tie them to earth and float ^ ' over 
the hills and far away" with the freedom of 
flight. 

Samuel Langiey went beyond wishing and 
326 



SAMUEL P. LANGLEY 

longing. He studied the flight of hawks and 
gulls carefully and noted that their wings were 
motionless except when they turned them at a 
different angle to meet a new current of wind. 
^*I began then," he said, ^' dimly to suspect that 
the invisible ocean of the air was an unknown 
realm of marvelous possibilities." 

Years after, Professor Langley, the world- 
famous scientist and head of the Smithsonian 
Institute, came back to this problem that had 
fascinated him as a boy. ^^ Nature has solved 
the puzzle of flight ; why not man?' ' he said. He 
began to study the mathematics of flying and 
became convinced that the formulas given in 
the books concerning the increase of power with 
increase of velocity were all wrong. **At that 
rate a swallow would have to have the strength 
of a man!" he exclaimed. He devised a sort of 
whirling table with surfaces like wings to test 
with exactness just how much horse-power was 
required to hold up a surface of a certain weight 
while it was moving rapidly through the air, 
and by this means discovered and demonstrated 
the fundamental law of flight, known as Lang- 
ley 's Law, which tells us that the faster a body 

327 



CO:^QUESTS OF IlSrVEISTTIOK 

travels through the air the less is the energy 
required to keep it afloat. 

After proving that birds are held up like 
kites by pressure of the air against the under 
surface of their wings, he made experiments to 
show that their soaring flight is aided by ^^the 
internal work of the wind ; ' ' that is, by shifts 
in the currents of air, particularly by rising 
trends, which the winged creatures utilize by 
instinct. Watch a hawk as it circles through 
the air, dipping its wings now at this angle, 
now at that, and you will realize that the wind 
is his true and tried ally. He trusts himself to 
the sweep and swirl of the air, just as a swim- 
mer relies on the buoyancy of the water. 

Having demonstrated so much through ex- 
periments with his whirling table. Dr. Langley 
determined to construct a real flying-machine, 
with wide-spreading planes to sustain it in the 
air while it was driven along by a steam-engine 
which furnished power to the propellers. This 
machine, Avhich he called an *' aerodrome '^ (air 
run), was put to the test on May 6th, 1896. Dr. 
Alexander Graham Bell, who was present at 
the trial and who took pictures of the machine 

328 



SAMUEL P. LANGLEY 

in mid-air, declared, ' ' No one who witnessed the 
extraordinary spectacle of a steam-engine flying 
with wings in the air, lil^e a great soaring bird, 
conld doubt for one moment the practicability 
of mechanical flight. ' ' 

Though his effort to carry his experiments to 
the point of commercial success ended in dis- 
appointment, Langley never lost faith in the 
future of his airship. 

' ^ I have done the best I could with a difficult 
task, ' ' he said, shortly before his death in 1906, 
^^with results which, it may be hoped, will be 
useful to others. The world 7Yiust realize that a 
new possibility has come to it, and that the great 
universal highway overhead is soon to be 
opened." 

While the crowd was still laughing at the 
absurdity of a learned man's attempting to fly, 
there were eager young men seriously at work 
on the problem. ^^We had been interested in 
flight since our toy-making days, ' ' said Wilbur 
Wright, ^'but it was the knowledge that the 
head of the most prominent scientific institution 
in America believed in the possibility of human 
flight which led us to enter heart and soul upon 

329 



COl^QUESTS OF mVENTIOl^ 

the quest. He recommended to us^ moreover, 
the books which enabled ns to form sane ideas 
at the outset. It was a helping hand at a critical 
time, and we shall always be grateful.'' 

So it is that the work of one man is passed 
along as a torch to those who carry on after 
him. 

Why did Wilbur and Orville Wright, the in- 
ventors of the first successful heavier-than-air 
flying-machine, take up the problem of flight? 
Get a lively child in the habit of thinking, then 
give him a live subject to think about, and 
something is bound to come of it. 

There was a simple house in Dayton, Ohio, 
not very different from its neighbors ; but it was 
a real home with windows that opened out on 
the world of ideas. Books were the familiar 
friends of the children who lived there and they 
learned to use their eyes and to think about 
what they saw. 

One day their father came in looking mysteri- 
ous. There was something partly hidden in his 
hand. What could it be 1 Before they could get 
more than the most tantalizing glimpse he 
tossed it suddenly into the air. Then, instead 

330 



THE WEIGHT BEOTHEES 

of falling to the floor as the boys expected, it 
flew across the room until it struck the ceiling. 
It fluttered about there a few moments, to the 
delight and wonder of Wilbur and Orville, who 
cried, ^^It's a bat!'' Then it fell to the floor. 
Picking it up and examining it eagerly, the boys 
saw a ^^ light frame of cork and bamboo cov- 
ered with paper, which formed two screws, 
driven in opposite directions by rubber bands 
under torsion." 

'*It 's a helicopter,'' said their father. 
Bishop Milton Wright was a teacher and an 
editor who was known to the people of the com- 
munity as a man of wide knowledge. He had 
been, too, a great traveler, and had brought 
back to that home in Dayton ideas from many 
parts of the world. He explained how the new 
toy rose in the air by means of its spinning, 
screw-like propellers. But helicopter (which 
their father said meant ^^ screw- wing") did not 
mean as much to them as their own name did, 
so the boys continued to call it a bat, and, since 
it was a frail toy with a short life, they tried 
their hand at making other ''bats." 

What was to hinder their making really size- 
331 



Cp:N"QLTESTS OF i:N'YENTIO]Sr 

able ones? Alas! it turned out that the larger 
the bat the less at home it was in the air. They 
turned then to kites as the really reliable flyers. 
Their kites were the talk of the town boys nntil 
they decided that they were too old to be seen 
flying kites. 

But all the time their kites had been tugging 
at the strings they held, the puzzle of flight had 
been tugging at their fancy. They tried to 
understand something of the behavior of their 
toys as the wind tossed them about. Then as 
they grew older they turned to books, to learn 
what other people had found out about flying. 
When they read in the summer of 1896 that 
Otto Lilienthal, in the effort to balance himself 
in his *' gliding machine,'' had fallen to his 
death, they began to study the question 
seriously. 

That matter of balancing was the great diffi- 
culty. Lilienthal, who had given much thought 
to the mechanics of birds' flight, had made him- 
self wings like those of a soaring hawk or buz- 
zard and, thromng himself from the summit of 
a hill, had tested his theories as he glided 
through the air of the valley. He thought he 

332 



THE WRIGHT BROTHEES 

could keep his balance by shifting his weight as 
the wind shifted, but alas ! he had not won the 
*^ wings of the wind.'' So down he came to 
earth, one more pitiful Icarus. 

^^It is clearly not possible for a bird-man to 
keep up with the wind flaws by shifting his 
weight," the Wrights agreed. 

These aspiring scientists who now set to work 
to solve the problem of flight were partners in a 
bicycle shop of Dayton. ** Clever chaps and 
good business men,'' the neighbors said. 
^ ' They might have gone to college like their two 
older brothers and sister, but they decided to 
hold things together at home for their father, 
who travels about a great deal. ' ' Their mother 
was a college woman and a capable all-round 
home-maker. She died about the time these 
younger Wrights were through high school. 
^^They won't lose out, however, in the long run, 
by looking out for their father as well as for 
themselves." 

That bicycle shop in Dayton soon began to 
see strange sights. As they pictured the prac- 
tical problems of ^^ gliders" the brothers made 
models and tried out experiments. Lilienthal 

333 



CON^QUESTS OF IISTVENTION 

failed because his weight and the distance he 
might move could not be changed to meet the 
disturbing force of changing air currents, which 
steadily increase with size of wings and rate of 
wind, they decided. Some plan might, they 
thought, be devised for big machines to allow 
the flyer to shift the slant of different parts of 
the wings and thus make the wind a ''friendly 
enemy'' by compelling it actively to restore the 
balance it had threatened. 

''This shifting of the wing surfaces must be 
an automatic winning of equilibrium through 
reflex action as in the riding of a bicycle," they 
next decided. 

A gliding-machine of light spruce and steel 
wire and cloth pinions was built, with a rudder 
in front to guide and to counterbalance shifts 
in the center of air-pressure. There were two 
planes, curved to imitate a bird's wings, moved 
by cords controlled by the reflex action of the 
bird-man's body as he lay stretched flat across 
the middle of the under wing. 

"We will keep to gliders," the Wrights 
voiwed. "It 's foolish to trust delicate and 
costly machinery to wings that we have not 

334 



THE WEIGHT BEOTHEES 

learned to use. Besides it would certainly be 
well to discover what the wind can do in keep- 
ing us up before we call in another power.'' 

Days were spent in studying the mechanism 
of birds' flight, for, following the experiments 
of Langley, they became convinced that soaring 
birds were nature's aeroplanes with the power 
of balancing themselves and rising or falling on 
currents of air. 

Now for a chance to put to the test of actual 
practice their theory of automatic balance ! 

Lilienthal's method of coasting down hill on 
the air seemed a poor makeshift. Perhaps at 
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on the stretch of 
sand-dunes between Albemarle Sound and the 
Atlantic, they might find winds of the right 
strength to provide a real trial. The Weather 
Bureau assured them that the winds there were 
the steadiest and strongest of any that blew. 
Their machine might be launched like a kite 
with men to hold ropes fastened to the end of 
each wing. There would be time to try out the 
principles of equilibrium before the bird drifted 
down at last upon the dunes. 

But no kindly wind blew at Kitty Hawk in 
335 



COE-QUESTS OF INVENTION 

the autumn of 1900 powerfully enough to carry 
the glider up as planned. They flew it then as 
a kite without a pilot on board. ' ' All we gained 
by the test was an increased longing for further 
experiment, ' ' they said afterward. ' ' So far the 
results might be called encouraging, but we got, 
of course, no opportunity for practice in bal- 
ancing. Far from learning to fly, we had not 
even tried our wings.'' 

The brothers, who had taken up flying as a 
sport, found their high adventure was leading 
them far into the most fascinating of science's 
unexplored fields. The air-pressure on surfaces 
of a variety of shapes was measured and tested 
at different angles, and the results carefully 
tabulated and compared. This meant the mak- 
ing of many difficult experiments under the 
most baffling conditions. There seemed little 
enough in the way of achievement to show for 
months of exacting work, yet they knew that 
they were proceeding in the only sure and sane 
way. 

In like manner the experiments of 1901 and 
1902, with larger machines to which vertical 
tails were added to assist in balancing seemed to 

336 



THE WEIGHT BEOTHEES 

give small return for great effort. The experi- 
menters summed up the results in these words : 

In September and October, 1902, nearly one thousand 
gliding flights were made, several of which covered dis- 
tances of over six hundred feet. Some, made against a 
wind of thirty-six miles an hour, gave proof of the effective- 
ness of the devices for control. With this machine in the 
autumn of 1903 we made a number of flights in which we 
remained in the air for over a minute often soaring for a 
considerable time in one spot without any descent at all. 
Little wonder that our unscientific assistant should think 
the only thing needed to keep it indefinitely in the air 
would be a coat of feathers to make it light ! 

At last the moment seemed to have come 
when they might permit themselves to try 
power-flight. They had worked out in actual 
practice a system of balance for calms and for 
winds. A twelve-horsepower gas-engine, weigh- 
ing 240 pounds, was placed on an aeroplane 
which with the pilot weighed about 745 pounds. 
Then, on December 17, 1903, four flights were 
made at Kitty Hawk against a wind blowing 
twenty miles an hour. 

They knew now that the problem of equi- 
librium was solved. Where earlier aviators 
like LiHenthal had tried to hold their own in 
the air by shifting the position of the body, the 

337 



COE'QUESTS OF myENTio:N' 

Wrights had worked out a scientific method of 
balancing by warping the wings of their ma- 
chine. If a sudden change in their position or 
in the direction of an air current hit their plane, 
a lever caused the ends of the planes toward the 
earth to warp down and the opposite wing ends 
to warp up. This meant, as they had repeat- 
edly demonstrated, a definite gain in buoyancy 
for the lower wings and a corresponding loss in 
lifting-power for the upper ones. Then, as the 
machine righted itself, the lever was moved in 
time to prevent it canting to the other side. 
This method of control through the warping of 
the ends of flexible planes was the Wrights' 
great discovery. 

They were reaping the reward now of their 
patient study and experimentation and found 
that it was possible to be on the ''sure ground' ' 
of dependable laws and established facts while 
high in the clouds. At last it was possible for 
man to fling himself confidently in the ocean of 
the air relying upon the lifting-power of arched 
wings driven at a great speed by a light high- 
power engine. Thus it is the velocity of the 
aeroplane that keeps it up. Some one has said 

338 







i=l 

o 

< 

•a 



COE^QUESTS OF mVENTION 

that flight in the heavier-than-air machines is 
like skating rapidly on very thin ice. The air 
doesn't have time to get away from under- 
neath. ^'If we go fast enough, the wind does 
not trouble us,'' said the French aviator Ved- 
rines. ^^We trouble the wind. We outride the 
fiercest of storms." 

The first Wright machine had five hundred 
square feet of wings and a speed of forty miles 
an hour. At the rate of eighty miles an hour 
only one hundred and twenty-five square feet 
of sail surface would be needed. But if an 
aviator should try to drop speed to the point of 
ten miles an hour he would need eight thousand 
square feet of wing spread to keep him in the 
air. This makes it plain why the aeroplane ca/n- 
not go slowly. 

The Wrights were going ahead quietly with 
experiments in circular flying over a field near 
Dayton when the world found them out. Now 
amid the shouts and plaudits of the crowd, the 
inventors who had given men wings kept their 
heads and their mental balance as steadily as 
they had maintained equilibrium in flight. 
**When all the world would have made them 

340 



THE WBIGHT BEOTHEES 

strut their hour as popular heroes/' one writer 
observed, ^'the Wrights refused and kept a 
serene and even course. For instance, all of- 
ficial Washington used to go out to watch Or- 
ville Wright's flights at Fort Myer, and the 
newspaper men became exasperated because he 
would not take advantage of so favorable an 
opportunity to do something dramatic. " 

Wliile in Europe they were everywhere ap- 
plauded and feted. Kings and popular heroes 
vied with one another in doing them honor. 
But everywhere people were amazed that they 
never yielded to the temptation to do something 
spectacular, — to cut a dash while the nations 
stood at attention. 

*^Will you not try for the prize offered the 
first aviator to cross the English Channel T' 
Wilbur Wright was asked. 

*^No,'' he replied; ''it would be risky to no 
purpose. It would not prove anything more 
than a journey overland." 

While the Wrights went on making experi- 
ments in their aircraft and giving lessons in 
flight other bird-men rose to fame. In France, 
particularly, Louis Bleriot and the Seguins led 

341 



CO^sTQUESTS OF mVENTIO:^^ 

the advance in aeroplane-construction. The 
French developed the monoplane type of flying- 
machine and also devised the undercarriage of 
wheels which made ascent possible from the 
ground instead of from a specially prepared 
track. 

In the Great War the aeroplanes played a 
leading part. They were "the eyes of the 
army/' doing scout duty and directing the 
range of batteries. At sea they did the most 
effective patrol and convoy work. No ship was 
ever attacked by U-boats while under the escort 
of aeroplanes. Special planes were developed 
with machine-guns capable of firing through the 
propeller without harming it to bring down 
enemy air-craft. Many machines were equipped 
with automatic cameras for map-making and 
with radio apparatus and special devices for 
sighting and bomb-dropping. The air service, 
then, plays a most important part in the de- 
fense of our country. 

In May, 1918, an air line between Washing- 
ton and New York was instituted for the carry- 
ing of mail, about two hours and a half being 
allowed for the trip. In crossing mountains 

342 



THE WRIGHT BROTHERS 

and deserts and in maintaining communication 
with remote corners of the country as when 
men are on scout duty over our timber lands 
to detect and report forest fires, the aeroplane 
is proving indispensable. 

Surely, the greatest and the most dramatic 
victory for mankind in the early years of the 
twentieth century was the conquest of the air. 



343 



OLD SIGNALS AND NEW 



Over slim wires, buried in conduits below the trampled 
street, or high strung, swinging in the rising wind, the voices 
of a thousand people told their thousand messages to wait- 
ing ears. A passing thought, perhaps, that you would have 
me hear; with a single movement you lift the transmitter 
from the hook beside you; white flashes a tiny lamp on a 
black panel; a girl's hand sweeps across the board and 
plugs in the connection. Space, useless, is swept aside; 
though actual miles may intervene I am suddenly beside 
you. 

Joseph Husband : America at Work. 



OLD SIGNALS AND NEW 

THE means that early peoples took of send- 
ing messages include many ingenious de- 
vices. The American Indians used to signal 
with smoke-puffs made by placing a blanket 
over a fire and then quickly withdrawing it, a 
number of such puffs following in quick succes- 
sion being sent as a warning of an enemy's ap- 
proach. One smoke-puff was used to attract 
attention ; two told that the sender would camp 
near by; and three were an appeal for help. 
At night, the Indians made use of fire arrows ; 
one meant the approach of an enemy, two 
flashed the news of danger, and three meant 
great danger. 

We know that the Egyptians used flashes of 
light from mirrors as prearranged signals, and 
tradition has it that the rays reflected from the 
gleaming shields of the heroes of Marathon 
were used to flash news of the battle. Here we 

347 



C0:NQUESTS of mVEITTION 

have in germ the heliograph which to-day sends 
any message by the Morse code of long and 
short gleams. 

At the Vatican may be seen a drawing of an 
instrument used in the time of Alexander the 








"7% 



A Signal Tower 

Great for voice-signaling^ a curious sort of 
megaphone or speaking trumpet that was said 
to have achieved a mighty shout that could be 
heard several miles away. In some places in 
France there are still to be seen ruins of watch- 
towers built by the Eomans for signaling- 
stations. So it is that in a variety of ways peo- 

348 



OLD Siai^ ALS AND NEW 

pie in all ages have sought to communicate with 
each other in time of need. 

The first real conquest of invention in the 
sending of messages was brought about by the 
telegraph and by the Morse code. This code in- 
troduced a system capable of application where 
the electric telegraph is not available. A steam- 
boat whistle may, for instance, give the dots and 
dashes, as does the flashing light of the helio- 
graph. 

With the telephone which carries the com- 
plex sound-waves of the human voice we seem 
to be in the realm of magic. Hardly more won- 
derful was the discovery that wires were not 
necessary to conduct the electric waves through 
space. Men might now speak together any- 
where. 

Lo, Science waves her hand, and silently 

A magic web is spun from sea to sea. 
The States crowd close together, as at night 

A family clusters round the fireside's light. 
The fair-haired goddess of the Golden Gate 

Wafts welcome to the East's remotest State, 
And, standing on the far Pacific shore. 

Hears the Atlantic's mighty waters roar. 



349 



THE FATHER OF THE TELEGRAPH 

Samuel F. B. Moese (1791-1892) 

A YEAR after the death of Benjamin 
Franklin — on April 27, 1791 — there was 
born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, about a 
mile from the birthplace of the great American 
who with his kite and key caught electricity 
from the clouds, the American inventor who 
learned to use that mysterious force in flashing 
with the quickness of thought the messages, of 
people over wires. Samuel Finley Breese 
Morse, the boy was called — the ''Samuel Fin- 
ley'' for his mother's grandfather who had been 
a president of Princeton College. His mother's 
name, Elizabeth Ann Breese, seemed to express 
the wonderful ''sweetness and light" of her 
nature, at once strong and gentle. Finley, the 
boy was called, except when at school his mates 
gave him the nickname "Geography," partly 

350 



SAMUEL F. B. MOESE 

because his father was the author of a geog- 
raphy, and partly because the little chap of 
eight seemed to have more things to tell about 
the wonders of the world than seemed quite 
natural to the other boys at Phillips Andover 
Academy. 

But it was soon seen that young Finley cared 
more for making pictures than for maps. When 
he entered Yale, at the age of fifteen, he helped 
to pay his own way by making silhouettes and 
miniatures. In his last year at college Finley 
wrote home a penitent letter confessing to a 
*' buttery bill" of forty-three dollars, but added 
that the butler was willing that he should take 
his likeness in payment of seven dollars of the 
amount ; and that he had several orders beside 
at ^ve dollars each. ^ * My price for profiles is 
one dollar, and everybody is ready to engage 
me at that price, ' ' he concluded. 

In another letter, sending home an itemized 
expense account for the term of fifteen dollars 
(not including tuition, board, washing, and 
wood bills), he made excuse for extravagance 
in a way that showed he had inherited the con- 

351 



cois^QUESTS OF i]^ye:^tio:n" 

science of his strict Puritan ancestors. He 
writes : 

I find it impossible to live in college without spending 
money. At one time a letter is to be paid for, then comes 
up a great tax from the class or society. . . . When I have 
it is with the greatest pain that I part with it. I think 
money in my hand I feel as though I had stolen it, and 
every minute I shall receive a letter from home blaming 
me for not being economical, and thus I am kept in dis- 
tress all the time. 

The items of that bill are of interest as throw- 
ing light on the social background of a Yale 
student in 1807, as well as giving a side-light on 
the character of Finley Morse at this time : 

Postage $2.05 

Oil 50 

Taxes, fines, etc 3.0U 

Oysters 50 

Washbowl 371/2 

Skillet 33 

Ax, $1.33; Catalogues, .12 1.45 

Powder and shot 1-12^2 

Cakes 1.75 

Wine (Thanksgiving Day ) 20 

Toll on bridge 15 

Grinding ax ^ .08 

Museum .25 

Poor Man 14 

Carriage for trunk 1.00 

352 




Courtesy of The Mentor 



Samuel F. B. Morse 



SAMUEL F. B. MOESE 

Pitcher 41 

Sharpening skates .371^ 

Circulating library .25 

Post papers 57 

Lent never to be returned .25 

Paid for cutting: wood ,25 



$15,001/2 



It was doubtless a real disappointment to the 
father, who hoped that his eldest son would 
enter one of the ^'learned ]Drofessions" for 
which his college career was preparing him, to 
hear that all Finley's inclination was for paint- 
ing. In a letter written to his father in July, 
1810, he said: 

I am now released from college and am attending to 

painting. ... As to my choice of a profession^ I still 
think that I was made for a painter, and I would be obliged 
to you to make such arrangement with Mr. Allston for my 
studying with him as you shall think expedient. I should 
desire to study with him during the winter, and as he 
expects to return to England in the spring, I should admire 
to be able to go with him. 

Indeed, it was soon evident to the young 
man's friends that all his heart was in his 
painting. Though he dutifully met his father's 
plans for him and worked for a while in a book- 

353 



CONQUESTS OF INYElNTIOIsr 

shop, Ms evenings were spent in a room over 
'the kitchen which he had turned into a studio. 
There he worked ahead cheerfully, seizing as 
many hours as possible for painting out of 
doors. 

**Your landscape shows signs of being a 
credit to you,'' said his father one day, looking 
from the picture to his son thoughtfully. 

*' Yes,'' replied Finley, ''they say it is proper 
handsome and they want me to believe it is so ; 
but I shan't yet a while," 

''Now, son," said the father with serious 
conviction, "you make me sure that you are 
entering upon this calling soberly and with the 
determination to do real work. You may give 
up the book-shop and go forward in your chosen 
way, with my blessing." 

Jedidiah Morse was a man of consequence, 
who numbered among his acquaintance men of 
note in England as well as in America. He was, 
therefore, able to give — with his blessing — in- 
troductions that were of real service to the 
aspiring student. In one such letter he wrote : 

In this country, young in the arts, there are few means 
of improvement. These are to be found in their perfection 

354 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

only in older countries and in none perhaps, greater than 
in yours. In compliance, therefore, with my son's earnest 
wishes and those of bis friend and patron, Mr. Allston 
(with whom he goes to London), we have consented to make 
the sacrifice of feeling (not a small one), and a pecuniary 
exertion to the utmost of our ability for the purpose of 
placing him under the best advantage of becoming eminent 
in his profession. 

Full of enthusiasm for Ms work, the young 
American sought an idea worthy of his mettle. 
''I shall try my strength on a Hercules!" he 
declared. The mighty hero of myth was indeed 
a subject to call out the powers of the strongest. 
When Morse found a model was necessary, he 
set to work to mould one in clay. 

West was greatly impressed by this attempt 
at sculpture. ^^You have the sense of form/' 
he said approvingly. '^I always said that a 
painter should be able to turn sculptor at need. 
His work then has grasp. You might send this 
to the exhibition ; it can do no harm. ' ' 

As a matter of fact, the figure won a gold 
medal. But when it came to the painting, that 
was another story. With a heart beating high 
in eager anticipation Morse begged West to 
come and judge. 

355 



CONQUESTS OF USTVENTIOE" 

*'So far, so good," said the master, looking, 
unmoved, at the canvas. ^' Go on and finish it.'' 

**But — ^but it is finished," stammered Morse, 
in amazement. 

^^Why, surely not: look here now — and 
here I ' ' said West calmly, indicating with swift 
strokes the points he found wanting. 

Once more the disciple set to work and again 
he summoned the master, longing for a word of 
approval. ^^Well," said West expressively, 
**well — go on and finish it!" 

^^But," said Morse, ^'but— " 

Yet once more he saw with the master's eyes, 
and once again he set to work. 

At last the day came when West was con- 
vinced that the student had really done his 
utmost. 

**Now," he said, *^you may turn to another 
subject. Hercules killed serpents in his cradle, 
remember. You have won something of the 
strength of Hercules in this first study by 
strangling self-satisfaction and discourage- 
ment." 

It is necessary to pass over with a word the 
next three years. Morse showed growing 

356 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

powers and also a growing ambition. He 
longed to paint great pictures, — to make the 
history of the past live in color and to place an 
American name among artists of the first rank. 

**My country has the most prominent place 
in my thoughts, ' ' he wrote home in 1814. ^ ' How 
shall I raise her name. . . . They say she has 
produced no men of genius. It is this more 
than anything (aside from painting) that in- 
spires me with a desire to excel in my art. I 
should like to be the greatest painter purely out 
of revenge,'^ 

So it was that Finley Morse felt the 
* ^ growing-pains " of a young country in addi- 
tion to the pangs of ambitious youth. It was, 
therefore, a double disappointment when finan- 
cial reverses made it impossible for his father 
to assist him further with his study. 

* ^ If I had had no higher thoughts than being 
a first-rate portrait-painter I would have chosen 
a far different profession,'' he exclaimed. 
**And now when I long not only for my own 
sake but for America to put her name with the 
masters of all time — with Rafael, Michael An- 

357 



CONQUESTS OF mVENTIOI^ 

gelo, and Titian — I must consider how at once 
to turn my work into money. ^ ' 

In the years that followed, he found that with 
all he could do as a painter it was not easy to 
turn his work into money enough to meet the 
needs of his family. He painted many port- 
raits, — among others those of President Mon- 
roe, Henry Clay, and DeWitt Clinton in the 
Metropolitan gallery, New York, and the full- 
length portrait of Lafayette in the New York 
City Hall. 

*'You make as many good friends as you do 
good pictures," a fellow artist once said; for 
Morse's personal gifts won recognition no less 
than his claims to rank as a painter. General 
Lafayette became, among others, a real friend. 

^^This is Mr. Morse, the painter, the son of 
the geographer ; he has come to Washington to 
take the topography of my face," said the 
general, in introducing the artist to his son at 
a levee which President Monroe gave in honor 
of his successor, John Quincy Adams. The ac- 
quaintance with Lafayette, begun with the sit- 
tings for his portrait, ripened into a lifelong 
friendship. 

358 



SAMUEL F. B. MOESE 

Though the first forty years of Morse ^s long 
life (he lived to be eighty-one) were devoted to 
painting, he gave evidence during that time of 
practical constructive ability. Dreaming of 
winning enough money by a sudden happy 
stroke to make himself independent of the ups 
and downs of an artist's fortune, he invented a 
marble-carving machine which was capable of 
repeating in marble *' perfect copies of any 
model." But alas for his hopes! The patent 
he applied for was refused as it would have been 
an infringement upon a machine patented sev- 
eral years before. Somebody had reached that 
goal ahead of him. 

Heartily know 

When the half -gods go 

The gods arrive — 

sings the poet. As we look back over the years 
of struggle of any great man we see that many 
"half-gods'' had to go in order to leave the 
way open for the real life-work. So it was with 
Morse. He had to push on past many disap- 
pointments which served to spur him to new 

359 



CONQUESTS OF USTVEISTTIOE" 

effort and saved him from tlie dullness of rou- 
tine. He was a seeker, always. 

Years of struggle passed, — years which he 
hoped might pave the way for the real work of 
which he dreamed. Great sorrow came to him. 
His young wife, who had brought the moonlight 
and starlight of ideal beauty and the sunshine 
of cheer and wholesome living into all his days, 
was taken from him. Within a few months 
afterward he lost his dearly loved father and 
mother also. 

^'Now when I paint the pictures of America 
for America, there will be no one to rejoice with 
me as they would have done," he mourned, 
when the opportunity for which he had longed, 
to go to Italy, came at last. / 

Several years went by quickly in Italy and 
France. Given the chance, now he would paint 
America's story — Columbus standing at the 
Santa Maria's prow, sailing past fear and peril 
on his way to India ; or Columbus with the New 
World at his feet. He hoped to be one of the 
artists selected to paint the large panel pictures 
for the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington. 
Modestly he put forward his claim. It seemed 

360 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

that all his life had been a preparation for this. 
All of his fellow artists rallied aronnd him; 
there might be question in regard to others, but 
there could be no doubt that Morse should be 
one of those chosen. 

Then, a mischief! John Quincy Adams (now 
a member of the House of Representatives) was 
on the congressional committee charged with the 
matter of the rotunda pictures. He introduced 
a resolution recommending that European ar- 
tists be considered as well as Americans, saying 
that in his judgment America could not produce 
painters able to cope with the great task in 
hand. This called forth a storm of indignant 
protest. One letter in particular which ap- 
peared in a leading New York paper voiced the 
feelings of the American painters. 

*^I recognize the hand of Morse, there,'' said 
Mr. Adams, to the other members of the Com- 
mittee. ''He knows how to lay it on with pen 
as well as with brush. Besides, he alone has 
had the experience both here and abroad which 
lies back of these paragraphs." 

The astute Mr. Adams learned later that 
Morse had nothing to do with the offending 

361 



COI^QUESTS OF INYENTIOIiJ' 

article, but that was after other painters had 
been selected for the rotunda pictures. James 
Fenimore Cooper was the writer whose ill- 
timed championship cost Finley Morse the op- 
portunity for which he longed above all else. 

^^Tliat was/' said Morse, ^Uhe second great 
grief of my life. I seemed to lose all spirit in 
the work that had before been meat and drink 
to me. ' ' 

But Fate was standing in the shadow ready 
to point the way to his real life-work. He had 
indeed begun to work on his great invention at 
this time, but if he had been given his desire in 
the matter of the pictures that would have had 
first place in his thought. ' ' When the half-gods 
go the gods arrive ! ' ' 

It was on the packet ship Sully , when Morse 
was returning to America after his years of 
study in France and Italy, that the idea of the 
telegraph was bom. Like Minerva springing 
full-armed from the forehead of Jove, it seemed 
to leap in a moment clear and complete from the 
brain of the inventor. The passengers were sit- 
ting about the lunch-table listening to a Dr. 
Jackson of Boston tell about some interesting 

362 



SAMUEL F. B. MOESE 

experiments of European scientists in elec- 
tricity and magnetism. 

'^The electric current passes instantaneously 
over wire of any length," he declared im.pres- 
sively. ''Its presence at any point on the line 
may be demonstrated by breaking the current 
there, ' ' 

The people listened, marveling and question- 
ing idly, when Morse exclaimed: ''Don't any of 
you see what that may mean, practically, to all 
of us, to everybody? If the presence of the 
electric current can be made visible in any part 
of the circuit, I see no reason why messages 
may not be transmitted instantaneously by 
electricity. ' * 

Still nobody seemed particularly moved. It 
was an interesting theory, of course^ but no one 
imagined it actually carried over into the world 
of practical affairs. Could it be conceived that 
an artist talking to a group of chance com- 
panions about a dinner-table had pictured 
something that was destined to change the cur- 
rent of the world's history? Yet at that mo- 
ment a new day for civilization was born, — the 
day when electricity, which had up to this time 

363 



C0I!TQUESTS OF INVEITTIOE' 

been but the plaything of scientists, should 
become the servant of mankind. 

Morse went out and paced the deck. His 
brain was afire with the great idea. The sudden 
flash of inspiration had not flickered and died 
down, but his inventive mind continued at white 
heat, picturing, picturing. Just how was the 
message to be sent over wire? A system of 
signals, a code would be needed. Nothing could 
be more simple than points and lines (dots and 
dashes) which, together with spaces, might indi- 
cate words or letters. Out came the artistes 
sketch-book and the general plan of the system 
known to-day as the "Morse Code'' was jotted 
down. As if he feared that his idea would melt 
away like a dream with the coming of a new 
day, the inventor carefully sketched in the es- 
sential parts of the apparatus as he saw it in 
his mind's eyes — an electromagnet with a rod 
attached, so acted upon by the strokes or shocks 
of the galvanic current as to move up and down 
and with each movement to mark with a lever- 
pen dots and dashes on a strip of paper passed 
along by an independent clockwork device. 

The idea of using the electric current to send 
364 



SAMUEL F. B. MOESE 

messages had occurred to scientists in England, 
France, and Germany. In America, too, Joseph 
Henry of the Smithsonian Institution was ex- 
perimenting along this line, but it remained for 
Morse, the artist, who for forty-one years had 




''^^m/^/^M/////A 



The Morse Telegiaph 



given all his thought to the making of pictures, 
to cut the Gordian knot of practical difficulties 
that stood between laboratory experiment and 
commercial success, and give the world a 
simple, paying electric telegraph. 

It was the beautiful simplicity of Morsels 
idea that marked it out for success. While men 

365 



COI^QUESTS OF USTYENTIOIsr 

who knew far more about science than he did 
were led off into perplexing by-paths, he saw 
clearly the essential points and went straight to 
the goal. 

We have said that the great idea came to the 
inventor on his voyage to America in October, 
1832. Bnt that idea could not have taken root 
in his mind if there had not already been some 
fertile ground to seize upon the seed and give 
it a fair chance. Morse had been vitally in- 
terested in the problems of electricity since he 
was a student at Yale, when in a natural- 
philosophy course given by Professor Day, 
some lectures illustrated by experiments with 
electricity had so impressed the young man that 
he v/rote an enthusiastic account of them in his 
letters home. One principle in particular fas- 
cinated him, and even the words of the text 
echoed in his memory more than a score of years 
after that memorable day on the Sully. '*If 
the electric current be interrupted at any place 
the fluid will become visible, and when it passes 
it will leave an impression upon any intermedi- 
ate body.'' Once in his last years, when Morse 
was passing in review the story of his struggle 

366 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

and triumph, he wrote: ^'The fact that the 
presence of electricity can be made visible in 
any desired part of the circuit was the crude 
seed which took root in my mind and grew into 
form, and ripened into the invention of the 
telegraph. ' ' 

During the years when Morse's work as an 
artist kept him in New York, he had followed 
up the interest in electricity aroused in his col- 
lege days, by attending lectures given by Pro- 
fessor Dana of Columbia University. He was 
therefore, at the time he began work on his 
invention, and intelligent amateur with a fair 
idea of what had been done in the field of elec- 
tricity. He was well acquainted with the basic 
principles involved in his work. Let us see what 
these foundation principles were: 

(1) He knew that a coil of wire in the shape 
of a horseshoe which could be magnetised by the 
passage of the galvanic current would lose its 
magnetism when the current was suspended. 

(2) He knew that this electromagnet could 
be made to lift and drop masses of iron of 
considerable weight. 

367 



COISTQUESTS OF I]SrYE:N'TIOE' 

(3) He knew that the galvanic current could 
be transmitted through wires of great length. 

With these three principles clearly in mind, 
Morse went a step farther, holding that the 
opening and closing of the current could be 
made through an electromagnet to give a defi- 
nite up and down motion to a lever-pen. This 
pen, alternately dropping and rising at regu- 
lated intervals from a tape of paper, should 
cause the current not only to signal but also to 
record the message. 

The days of the long voyage were not tedious 
to Morse, for he was working over his plans for 
the telegraph, trying to decide upon the best 
device for making an up-and-down motion sig- 
nal an intelligible message at one end of the 
wire and at the same time record it satisfac- 
torily at the other. The sketches in his book 
indicated possible ways of arranging magnets 
and levers. 

*^Well, Captain," he said, as they sailed into 
New York harbor, ^ ^ should you hear of the tele- 
graph one of these days as the wonder of the 

368 



S: 




^ 





Morse's Original Telegraph Instrument now in the National Museum 
Washmgton, D. C. 



I 
1 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

world, remember that the discovery was made 
on board the good ship Sully.' ^ 

At the landing Morse had hardly greeted his 
brothers, who were on hand to celebrate his re- 
turn to America, before he said, tapping his 
note-book, ^^I have something wonderful to 
show you!'* 

*'A brand-new idea just imported from Eu- 
rope for the great American picture "? ' ' said his 
brother Eichard, banteringly. 

^^It is an invention, a really great invention, 
and I have the whole plan as plain as A, B, C, 
on a couple of sheets in this note-book,'' said 
Morse. And he began at once to lay the wires 
of his scheme between his brothers and himself. 

^^Do you see?" he said, eagerly showing the 
signals of his code. *'The strokes at my end 
that open and close the current make the lines 
and points at your end. ' ' 

Some one has said that aspiration and inspi- 
ration must be reinforced by perspiration be- 
fore anything worth while is accomplished any- 
where. The greatest genius is the one who re- 
alizes that hard work is the secret of success. 
If Morse had not had genius of this sort he 

369 



COl^QUESTS OF IJ^VEISTTIOE" 

miglit have tossed his idea and his plans over- 
board and returned calmly to his work as a 
painter for all that would have come of his 
scheme. As it was, he decided to paint with a 
new purpose, — to gain time and money for the 
great idea. It proved, of course, much easier 
to plan and to work out plans on paper than to 
construct a model. There were no materials 
ready at hand. Everything had to be contrived 
and money was scarce. 

Morse's first instrument was a monument to 
the inventor's ingenuity and patient industry. 
Here is a description of it in his own words : 

My first instrument was made up of an old picture or 
canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old 
wooden clock, moved by a weight to carry the paper for- 
ward; three wooden drums, upon one of which the paper 
was wound and cast over the other two ; a wooden pendulum 
suspended to the top piece of the picture or stretching 
frame and vibrating across the paper as it passed over the 
center wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the 
pendulum in contact with the paper; an electro-magnet 
fastened to a shelf across the picture or stretching frame, 
opposite to an armature made fast to the pendulum ; a tight 
rule and type for breaking the circuit, resting on an endless 
band, composed of carpet binding which passed over two 
wooden rollers moved by a wooden crank. 

Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegTaphic apparatus 

370 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

existed in so crude a form that I felt a reluctance to have 
it seen. My means were very limited and I had no wish 
to expose to ridicule so many hours of laborious thought. 
I had for many months lodged and eaten in my studio, 
procuring my food in small quantities from some grocery 
and preparing it myself. To conceal from my friends the 
stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of 
bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this 
was my mode of life for many years. 

There were days when there was no danger of 
his pride suffering through his friends' dis- 
covering his furtive excursions for food, be- 
cause not only was the cupboard bare but there 
was no money ahead for the next meal. One 
day when a pupil failed to bring the expected 
fee for lessons, the master was in such sore 
straits that he said, ''Well, my boy, how are we 
otf for money to-day 1 ' ' 

''Why, sir,'' replied the youth, "I am sorry 
that I have not received the money I expected. 
But it will surely be here next week. ' ' 

"Next week I may be dead," was the start- 
ling remark of the painter. 

"Dead!" echoed the student, aghast. 

"Yes, dead of starvation." 

"Would ten dollars be of service?" asked the 
student, emptying his pocket hastily. 

371 



CONQUESTS OF mVEIsTTIOlSr 

''Ten dollars would save my life; it would at 
least serve that turn.'' As the pupil paid the 
money Morse remarked, ''This will mean my 
first meal in twenty-four hours.'' 

One day, as Morse was exhibiting his model 
to Professor Gale in his chemistry laboratory at 
the University of the City of Few York, a young- 
man who chanced in seemed struck by the 
apparatus with its maze of wires suspended in 
the room from one end to the other, back and 
forth many times, making a length of several 
hundred feet in all. He watched in silence for 
a long time ; then he approached the inventor. 

"Are you going to try it out on a larger scale, 
with a more extended line of conductors?" he 
asked. 

"As soon as I can command the necessary 
means," was the reply. 

"If," said the young man, "I can furnish the 
financial backing, will you give me a fair share 
in the enterprise!" 

A satisfactory agreement was reached, and 
the new partner, Alfred Vail— who had, besides 
inherited wealth, technical ability of a high 

372 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

order — set to work with, enthusiasm. His 
father, who was the head of the Speedwell Iron 
Works at Morristown, New Jersey, had confi- 
dence enough in his son's venture to advance 
the two thousand dollars needed for making 
instruments and securing patents. 

In a room at the iron-works Vail struggled, 
unaided except by a fifteen-year-old apprentice, 
with the task of constructing a copy of Morse's 
model and incidentally making some improve- 
ments of his own. Morse, too, was busy con- 
triving and planning. Each step in advance led 
to new problems to be solved. Realizing the 
necessity of perfecting his code by having the 
simplest combinations of dots and dashes to 
represent the most frequently used letters, lie 
visited a printing-office and noted down the 
amount of type provided for the various mem- 
bers of the alphabet. He found the largest 
supply of e's and t's and the smallest number 
in the q and z compartments. This examina- 
tion of the case of type led to some important 
changes in the Morse alphabet.* 

* Some zealous friends of Alfred Vail have claimed for 
him the honor of this development of the telegraphic code; 

373 



CONQUESTS OF liN'VElSrTIO:^' 

It was a proud day wlien, in January, 1838, at 
last the model was ready for its trial. Mr. Vail 
was sent to come to the workroom where his 
son was seated at the sending key, with Morse 
at the receiver. Smilingly the father wrote on 
a slip of paper, *^A patient waiter is no loser,'' 
and handed it to his son. ^'If you can get that 
over the wire, I stand convinced that you have 
a good thing,'' he remarked. The machine 
clicked busily for a few moments, the record 
was made, and Morse read off the message 
instantly. 

It may be mentioned here that the recording 
device is not used to-day. In actual practice the 
operators have found it simpler to take the mes- 
sage directly from the clicks of their instru- 
ments. 

Morse had now a machine that would work, a 
machine that represented years of patient study 
and experimentation. He had, moreover, re- 
ceived valuable help not only from young Vail 
but also from Professor Gale. The latter was 

but letters from Vail to the Father of the Telegraph cited in 
the ''Life and Letters of Morse" by his son, make clear 
reference to the ' ' Morse Code ' ' as belonging to the inventor in 
fact as well as in name. 

374 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

well acquainted with Joseph Henry's telegraph, 
which sent signals over a mile of wire to an 
electromagnet that marked the breaks in the 
current by striking a bell. Through the help 
of Gale and Henry, Morse developed the relay, 
which makes it possible to send messages over 
great distances by means of reinforcing electro- 
magnets that open and close a local circuit with 
suitable batteries at points where the current 
begins to weaken. 

But, as in the case of other great inventions, 
the real trial came in getting the public to 
understand and use the gift that was theirs for 
the asking. After fruitless demonstrations in 
New York and Philadelphia, Morse took his in- 
struments to the office of the Committee on 
Commerce of the House of Representatives, in 
the Capitol at Washington. There, while most 
people looked upon it indifferently as nothing 
more than a curious toy, the chairman of the 
committee was won to enthusiastic champion- 
ship. But even with this start a weary time 
passed before anything was done. A financial 
panic crippled the Vails and a political cam- 
paign like a Juggernaut rode ruthlessly over 

375 



COISTQUESTS OF I^VE^N-TIOl^ 
everything that could pay no tribute to party 
interests. At last, however, a favorable report 
from the committee was acted upon and the 
House appropriated thirty thousand dollars for 
the laying of a telegraph line between Baltimore 
and Washington. 

This was, however, at the very close of the 
session, and there seemed little hope of the bill 
passing the Senate. On the evening before ad- 
journment Morse sat in the gallery, hoping 
against hope. 

''There is no use waiting now,*' a friendly 
senator advised. ''You can't really hope for a 
vote at this late hour. Besides, the Senate is 
not in favor of your scheme. You may just as 
well give up and go home. ' ' 

Morse went to his room and after paying his 
bill preparatory to leaving next day found that 
he had only thirty-seven cents in the world. 
After saying a prayer for strength and courage 
to press on still, in spite of seeming defeat, he 
went to bed. 

On the stairs the next morning he was greeted 
by the cheery voice of Miss Ellsworth, daugh- 

376 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 

ter of the Commissioner of Patents, who had 
been a real friend in need. 

*^ Professor, I have come to congratulate 
you,'' she said. 

^ ' Congratulate me ! ' ' exclaimed Morse. ^ ^ On 
whatr' 

^*0h,'' she replied, ^^am I the happy bearer 
of good tidings? On the passage of your bill 
by the Senate. It went through without debate 
a few minutes before closing-time." 

^* Well, dear lady,'' said Morse, *'for this good 
word you shall send the first message over the 
new line. ' ' 

Work now went forward in earnest. At first 
the wire was laid in a pipe underground, but 
after spending a large part of the money on the 
construction of conduits which proved a failure, 
Morse decided to carry the wires overhead on 
poles like those used to-day. When the line 
was complete. Miss Ellsworth came forward 
with her message, ^'What hath God wrought?" 
It was received in Baltimore and flashed back, 
giving immediate proof of the success of the 
telegraph. 

There were, of course, other battles to be 
377 



coi^QUESTS OF i:^ryE]srTio]sr 

fought ; but the tide had turned and the Father 
of the Telegraph knew that the future of his 
invention was assured. He went on, with the 
spirit and the patriotic zeal he had once put 
into his work as a painter. When, near the 
close of his life, he responded to the cheers of 
a great assembly who had gathered in New 
York to do him honor on the occasion of the 
unveiling of his statue, he concluded his address 
with these words: 

^ ' Forecasting the future of the telegraph, my 
most powerful stimulus to perseverance through 
all the perils and trials of its early days — and 
they were neither few nor insignificant — ^was 
the thought that it must inevitably be world- 
wide in its application, and, moreover, that it 
would everywhere be hailed as a grateful 
American gift to th6 nations. . . . The inven- 
tion is one ^ whose lines (from America) have 
gone out to all the earth, and their words to the 
end of the world.' '' . 



378 



THE STORY OF THE TELEPHONE 

Alexander Graham Bell (1847- ) 

THE story of Alexander Graham Bell's 
early life is a wonderful tale of scientific 
adventure. 

His father and his grandfather before him 
had been specialists in elocution and the laws of 
speech. They had written important texts on 
the subject, and one in particular, ^* Visible 
Speech,'' reduced the mechanics of word- 
formation to a science that had practical appli- 
cation in the teaching of foreign languages and 
the correction of speech defects. 

^ * As I look back and see the points in my early 
life that led to my work on the telephone, ' ' said 
Dr. Bell, ^'I see that one important element was 
my love of music. I could play the piano by 
ear before I could read or write. I knew, too, 
all sorts of musical instruments in a sort of 

379 



CO:t^QUESTS OF Il^VEISTTION 

way. I knew how they were made and the way 
in which sounds were produced. 

'^A second element of even greater impor- 
tance was that I came of a family that had made 
a study of oral speech for two generations be- 
fore me. People who lisped or stammered came 
to my father to be taught how to place the vocal 
organs in forming sounds." 

Then Dr. Bell went on to relate how his father 
encouraged his boys to make a hobby of voice 
work. 

''You are fond of making things/' he said 
one day. ^^Do you think you could make a 
speaking-machine ! ' ' 

It was a fascinating idea. Graham under- 
took to model the mouth from a skull, making 
the tongue and soft parts of the throat of rub- 
ber stuffed with raw cotton; while his brother 
Melville worked upon the lungs and vocal cords. 
When they got their creature into shape, how- 
ever, they were too much excited to complete 
the bellows that was to do duty as lungs. As 
one boy blew through a tube and the other 
moved the lips of the machine out came a 

380 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

** sound like a Punch and Judy show'^ crying 
**Mama'' quite distinctly. 

Of course the boy who knew music and so 
much of human speech longed to know more 
about the marvels of sound. When sixteen 
years old he started out with enthusiasm to 
teach elocution and to make further experi- 
ments with the laws of acoustics. One day, 
when he believed he had arrived at some im- 
portant discoveries, he went to consult Alex- 
ander Ellis, a leading scientist who was trans- 
lating into English the ''Sensations of Sound,'' 
by Helmholtz. ''Very interesting tests," re- 
marked Ellis sympathetically, "but the German 
master of physics has already given these facts 
to the world — and more completely." Then he 
invited Bell to his house and showed him how 
Helmholtz had set tuning-forks vibrating by 
means of electromagnets, and had succeeded in 
imitating the quality of the human voice by 
blending the tones of a number of tuning-forks. 

Now the young man who had succeeded in 
making a talking-machine leaped in fancy to 
something that had no place in Helmholtz 's 
experiments. 

381 



COISTQUESTS OF mVEITTION 

"Why not make a musical telegraph T' he 
hazarded, "a telegraph with a number of keys 
like a piano, capable of sending a like number 
of different tones at one time over a single 
wire.'' He recalled that when he sang a tone 
close to the piano strings, the string tuned to 
that pitch would vibrate in answer. He jumped 
to the conclusion that tones could actually be 
carried over wires and reproduced by means of 
the electromagnet. He had the thrill of a Co- 
lumbus coming in sight of land. How was he to 
know that scores of other inventors had caught 
a glimpse of the same magic shore and had 
sailed all round it, but that it had melted before 
them like a mirage! This idea was to Bell, 
however, a kindly will-o'-the-wisp that led on 
to the search for the telephone. / 

The young man pushed forward his study as 
if he were determined to follow the advice to 
"learn everything about something and some- 
thing about everything" in a day — or, rather, 
overnight. For his days were spent in teach- 
ing, and hours which should have been given to 
sleep were seized for research. The day of 
reckoning came, when a serious breakdown 

382 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

seemed certain. His father was thoroughly 
alarmed, and with reason, for two of his sons 
had been carried off suddenly by the dread 
White Plague. 

*^ Another climate and life in the open,'' said 
the doctor, and the father insisted on his son 
giving up his cherished projects to seek health 
on a farm in Canada. But while planting crops 
and garnering renewed vigor the young inven- 
tor of twenty-six found time to work out with 
the Mohawk Indians some of his father's 
theories of speech. 

Then word came of the chance to introduce 
this system of lip-reading at the school for the 
deaf in Boston ; and young Bell, with health 
fully restored now, entered upon the work with 
all the zest in the world. So great was his suc- 
cess that he was called to a professorship in 
Boston University, where he gave instruction in 
his method of language-teaching for the deaf. 

It seemed as if fair fortune were trying to 
lure the gifted young teacher away from his 
interest in inventions. He opened a School of 
Vocal Physiology which met with instant suc- 
cess. His work was filling a great need*. Almost 

383 



CONQUESTS OF USTVENTIOlSr 

he was persuaded that here lay his true life- 
work. 

Then it was that by a little deaf child he was 
led back into the paths, of experiment. Five- 
year-old Georgie Sanders lived in Salem, and 
there the teacher was persuaded to make his 
home for a time with his pupil. Association 
with the Sanders family revived BelPs passion 
for science, and their cellar was turned over 
to him for a laboratory. 

That cellar workshop was for three years a 
place big with effort and promise. There coils 
of wire, magnets, and tuning-forks lay about in 
a strange medley, that gave, however, the first 
hint of the day when speech was to be carried 
across continents by means of the electric cur- 
rent. Bell worked feverishly and furtively 
while the world slept. That time was his own 
and safe from interruption ; for now that he felt 
himself on the threshold of success he was jeal- 
ously fearful lest some one would steal his great 
idea and push ahead through the open door. 

^' Often in the middle of the night,'' said 
Thomas Sanders, the father of the little deaf 
pupil, ^^Bell would wake me up, his black eyes 

384 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

blazing and his crisp, curly hair fairly bristling 
with excitement. Sending me to the cellar, he 
would plunge out to the barn and begin to signal 
along his experimental wires. If I noticed any 
improvement he would execute a war-dance of 
delight and go happily to bed. If things proved 
disappointing, however, he would settle down 
doggedly at his work-bench for a further try- 
out." 

Another pupil of BelPs took his hand and 
gently helped him along the road of accom- 
plishment — and beyond to the Inn of Content. 
Fifteen-year-old Mabel Hubbard, with her ap- 
pealing ways and understanding smile, com- 
pletely won the heart of the young professor 
who taught her to speak; and in a few years 
they were married. Her father, Gardiner G. 
Hubbard, became a stanch ally of Bell and later 
of the telephone. 

*^Do you know,'' said Bell to Hubbard one 
day, his dark eyes glowing and his voice vibrat- 
ing with mysterious emphasis, *^do you know 
that if I sing the note G close to the strings of 
this piano that the G-string will answer me T ' 

^^Well, what of that!'' asked Hubbard, won- 
385 



coi^QUESTS OF myENTio:^r 

dering not so much at the words as at the 
dramatic emphasis. 

^^It is a fact of tremendous importance," re- 
plied Bell. *^It means that we may some day 
have a musical telegraph, which will send as 
many messages at one and the same moment 
over one wire as there are notes on that 
piano.'' 

Hubbard took to the idea with ready sym- 
pathy and support ; but when the day came that 
Bell confided his dream of sending speech over 
wires, the man of affairs was alarmed. He felt 
that the promising inventor was in danger of 
turning visionary. 

^^ Stick to a practical possibility; don't go 
chasing after a will-o'-the-wisp that can never in 
any event be more than a scientific curiosity, ' ' 
he warned. ^ ' Go on with the musical telegraph 
which may really make your fortune." 

'^If I can make a deaf-mute talk I can make 
iron talk," responded Bell. 

Now he began to take up a new and a grue- 
some kind of experiment with the human ear 
itself. Taking the complete organs of hearing 
from a dead man's head, he arranged the sec- 

386 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

tions of the skull so that a straw which rested 
against the ear-drum at one end touched a piece 
of moving smoked glass at the other. A new 
sort of ^* visible speech'' resulted, for when he 
spoke with loud distinctness into the ear, the vi- 
brations of the drum appeared in tiny, waving 
lines upon the glass. 

^*If a little membrane like the ear-drum can 
vibrate a bone," said Bell, *^then an iron disk 
may be made to vibrate an iron rod, — or, at least 
an iron wire. ' ' In that moment the idea of the 
telephone flashed in vision before the imagina- 
tion of the inventor. He distinctly saw two iron 
disks (like ear-drums), miles apart, but brought 
into contact by means of an electric wire which 
could catch the vibrations of sound from the 
disk at one end and instantaneously reproduce 
them at the other. 

There remained now the task of turning his 
idea into practical reality, — a task made doubly 
difficult because the friends who were giving him 
financial aid still insisted on his devoting him- 
self to the musical-telegraph idea. Encourage- 
ment came, however, when a visit to his patent 
lawyer at Washington gave an opportunity to 

387 



CONQUESTS OF mvENTioisr 

consult the eminent scientist Joseph Henry, 
who, it will be remembered, had given Morse 
valuable assistance with his telegraph. It 
seemed as if the wisdom of the past were meet- 
ing the daring enterprise of a new age when 
Americans Prophet of Science — seventy-eight 
years old now — sat shoulder to shoulder with 
the young inventor of twenty-eight, as he ex- 
amined and tested his apparatus. 

At length the verdict came. ' ' You are in pos- 
session of the germ of a great invention," said 
Henry, ^^and I would advise you to work at it 
until you have made it complete.'' 

^^ But," interposed Bell, despairingly, ^*I have 
not the necessary experience with electricity." 

^^Get it," was the reply that seemed to in- 
fuse courage and determination into the inven- 
tor as by an electric current. 

For three months Bell pressed on with his 
tests, until one day his assistant heard dis- 
tinctly the twang of a watch-spring over the 
wire. That sound was to Bell as the blare of 
a victorious trumpet. Now he succeeded in 
convincing Sanders and Hubbard. As for the 

388 



ALEXANDER GEAHAM BELL 

assistant, Watson, he had in him already a de- 
voted ally. 

**If Morse, who was a painter, could muster 
enough knowledge of electricity at the age of 
forty to carry forward his idea of the telegraph, 
our case is by no means hopeless,'' Bell said to 
Watson. 

Many months passed with trial after trial, 
during which the infant machine refused to do 
little more than make distressing indistinct 
noises. Then one great day — it was March 10, 
1876, — the assistant heard quite clearly over 
the wire the words, ^'Mr. Watson, come here, I 
want you. ' ' Never was summons responded to 
with more headlong speed as Watson rushed 
from the room with the news of victory. * *I can 
hear you ! " he shouted at the door. ^ ^ I can hear 
the words!" 

The days that followed were passed in coax- 
ing the infant wonder to speak with greater dis- 
tinctness. *^ During the summer of 1876," said 
Watson, ' ^ the telephone was talking so well that 
one didn't have to ask the other man to say it 
over again more than three or four times before 

389 



COl^QUESTS OF mVENTIOI^ 

one could understand quite well, if the sentences 
were simple.'' 

This was the year of the Centennial Exposi- 
tion in Philadelphia, and Gardiner Hubbard, 
who was one of the commissioners in charge of 
the exhibits, arranged a place for the telephone 
in a corner of the Department of Education; 
and obtained a promise from the judges to visit 
the obscure niche between wall and stairway 
where it was set up. 

The fateful Sunday afternoon came when the 
great men in their rounds passed before the 
little table where Bell waited, tense and eager. 
All were weary and indifferent, for the hour 
was late and the day very warm. Here was an 
odd, homespun sort of contrivance. One of the 
men took up a receiver idly and laid it down 
without even putting it to his ear. Yawning, 
they agreed that their hotels promised more 
interest than new wonders. 

It proved, however, that Fortune was just 
pausing long enough to get the stage properly 
set for Bell's great triumph. At that moment 
of seeming defeat in walked Dom Pedro, Em- 

390 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

peror of Brazil, accompanied by the Empress 
Theresa and their suite. 

'^Professor Bell, I am delighted to see you 
again!'' said the emperor, who was greatly 
interested in work for the deaf, and had once 
visited Bell's class in ^'Visible Speech" at Bos- 
ton University. 

Everybody was wide awake now, as Dom 
Pedro put the receiver to his ear, while Bell 
went to the transmitter at the end of the room. 
Then the royal visitor lifted his head and looked 
about him dramatically. ' ' My God ! — it talks ! ' ' 
he cried in amazement. 

Now Joseph Henry took the receiver. ^'I 
shall never forget," said one of those present, 
*Hhe look of awe that passed over that grand 
old man's face as he heard the iron disk speak 
with the accents of the human voice. ' ' 

Next came Sir William Thomson, later known 
as Lord Kelvin, the great electrical scientist and 
engineer of the first Atlantic cable. ''It does 
speak," he said. "It is the most wonderful 
thing I have seen in America." And that was 
the verdict of the judges, — that of all the gifts 
to the Nation on the one-hundredth anniversary 

391 



CONQUESTS OF mVElSTTIOlST 

of the ringing of the Liberty Bell the telephone 
was the first in importance. 

Notwithstanding its brilliant introduction to 
America, the baby wonder shared the fate of 
other great inventions and had to fight hard for 
a foothold in the business world. But the men 
in control had the vision and the courage of 
pioneers, reinforced by sound organizing abil- 
ity ; and so in spite of the indifference and ridi- 
cule of the ignorant, and the bitter enmity of 
the powerful telegraph interests, who looked 
upon it as a trespasser upon Western Union 
territory, the telephone won its way. 

Did the great scientists who gathered about 
Bell at the Centennial and marveled that the 
electric waves could be made to carry and re- 
produce faithfully the complex sound-waves of 
the human voice, dream of how the telephone 
might one day figure in the affairs of men? Per- 
haps that is to ask the question, ^'Is the oak- 
tree more marvelous than the acorn from which 
it sprangT' 

Let us think for a moment of some of the 
marvels that hide behind the word ' ^ telephone ' ' 
in the world to-day. Think of a great switch- 

392 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

board with its maze of wires that are woven in 
and out, in and out, to the tune of the flashing 
light-signals, connecting any number of a vast 
city system with any other in a moment. Think 
of the underground lead-encased cables that 
pass under the streets of our cities, — great 
ropes of massed wires over which hundreds of 
messages pass magically side by side, and in 
and out, as the strands ravel off at their various 
destinations. Now there are underground cables 
connecting Washington, New York, and Boston. 
That came about in a dramatic fashion. The 
storm that swept over the country at the time of 
the inauguration of President Taft carried 
down so many wires that communication be- 
tween Washington and the rest of the country 
was cut off for several days. 

^'That must never happen again, ^' said the 
Bell engineers. ^^We must see to it that our 
capital is never out of touch with the rest of the 
country. ' ' 

Picture the wires of our country, — ^the nerves 
of the Nation. The big underground cables are 
like the spinal cord from which intelligence goes 
out in all directions to every body cell. So the 

393 




394 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

wires go over rivers, mountains, and deserts, 
and under the sea. At points where wires stop 
the messages can leap through the air from 
shore to island shore, or to ships at sea, by wire- 
less. 

Is there in all the realm of Wonder-Lore a 
more marvelous story than that of the tele- 
phone 1 



395 



WIRELESS 

GrUGLiELMo Makconi (1874- ) 

EACH of US in the world to-day is indeed the 
heir of all the ages, but few know how to 
nse to advantage the marvelous inheritance 
from the past. To each the days of opportunity 
come — 

And marching single in an endless file, 
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands; 

To each they offer gifts after his will, 

Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds 

them all. , 

But like careless children, intent on the toys 
of the moment, we give small heed to the real 
gifts of the hours. 

This is, however, the story of a boy who was 
alive to the meaning of his heritage. Guglielmo 
Marconi was born in 1874 in Villa Griff one near 
Pologna, Italy. From his Irish mother and Ital- 
ian father he inherited, it seemed, the strength 

396 



GUGLIELMO MAECONI 

of two lands and two races. His blue eyes looked 
out seriously on his world of wealth and the 
privileges of noble birth. Power meant to him 
opportunity to do something that would really 
count in the world. 

He went to school a while in Bologna, for 
another while in that fair city of art and poetry, 
Florence. But it was not the pictures nor the 
stories of the past that charmed the fancy of 
this Italian boy. The wonder-story of the real 
things everywhere about him — the story without 
beginning or end — ^had opened his eyes and set 
him thinking. 

He was such a quiet, shy lad that his peo- 
ple thought a taste of the life of the English 
schools might call him out of himself. So for a 
time he went to Bedford and later he had 
some experience of what it means to be a Rugby 
boy. But neither cricket nor football could 
lure him away from the play of wonder in sci- 
ence. His holidays were always spent in try- 
ing out, through experiments of his own, the 
fascinating problems of physics. Electricity 
had been his particular hobby from the time 
he was eleven or twelve years old. 

397 



CONQUESTS OF U^TVENTIOE" 

It was when he was a student at the Univer- 
sity of Bologna that he came face to face with 
his problem, and knew that he would never give 
up until he had found a solution. His work un- 
der Professor Eighi gave him the key to his 
door of opportunity; for Professor Righi was an 
enthusiastic disciple of the great German scien- 
tists Helmholtz and Hertz and knew all about 
the outposts of discovery that their achieve- 
ments had won. 

^'It was while Professor Hertz was demon- 
strating with a Ley den jar and two flat coils of 
wire at the Technical High School in Carlsruhe, 
just as I am working before you now,'' impress- 
ively declared Righi, one day, 'Hhat he came 
upon his great idea. He noticed that the dis- 
charge of electricity from the jar (a very small 
one, you will note) through one of the coils 
would induce a current in the other coil if there 
was a gap in the inducing coil. For the spark 
caused when the current jumped the gap set up 
electrical vibrations that gave rise to powerful 
currents in the neighboring wire. He soon de- 
termined that these currents were noticeable, 
even though the coils were separated by a con- 

398 



GUGLIELMO MAECONI 

siderable distance. It was clear to liim then 
that one might send out electrical waves through 
space without wires.'' 

Young Marconi listened breathlessly. From 
the time he was sixteen he had been fascinated 
by the thought that it might be possible to send 
wireless signals. He had read everything he 
could find relating to the matter. He knew 
Morse had proved, in 1842, that the electric 
current could be sent through water without 
wires, and that others had proved the possibility 
of using the earth as a conductor. Joseph 
Henry had clearly demonstrated that the elec- 
tricity sent out from a Leyden jar is wave-like, 
moving through the earth or water as ripples 
spread out over a pond following the fall of a 
pebble. Marconi knew, too, that people w^orking 
with a telephone receiver near a telegraph wire 
had distinctly heard music from a neighboring 
wire that was being used to test Edison's musi- 
cal telephone. The sounds had leaped in some 
way across the air gap to the telephone on the 
other line. And he knew that Edison, in 1885, 
had made use of these induced currents to signal 

399 



co:n^quests of invention 

to a moving train from a wire near the rail- 
way. 

What, now, was it that Hertz had found? 
Eagerly Marconi hnng on the words of his pro- 
fessor, who seemed to be speaking to him alone. 

''So it was," Righi went on, ''that Hertz 
made almost by accident the great discovery 
that the vibrations or waves of light and of 
electro-magnetism are alike in that they go with 
the same speed through the all-pervading ether ; 
their difference lies in the wave-length. These 
electric waves (now properly called Hertzian 
waves) are reflected from conducting surfaces 
as light is from polished surfaces. Pray note,'' 
Professor Eighi added, "that I say Hertz came 
to his discovery almost by accident; for the 
chance could only have come to one who had 
eyes to see and understanding to grasp the 
meaning of what he saw. In short. Hertz is the 
most able experimenter in physics that the 
world knows. In eight een-eighty-six he fol- 
lowed his first achievement by one even more re- 
markable. Across a gap in a coil of wire (hav- 
ing no electric contact with a battery) he made 
tiny sparks leap out at the moment of the ap- 

400 



GUGLiELMO MARCONI 

pearance on another coil with a longer gap of 
the spark made by the electrical discharge from 
a Leyden jar/' 

**Now,'' thought young Marconi, *4t must be 
plain to everybody that a power has been found 
that will send messages through space with the 
speed of light. Perhaps one of the great men 
like Hertz will to-morrow come forward with 
a way to telegraph without wires, but in the 
meantime I '11 see what I can work out/' So he 
set up poles at different points on his father's 
estate to hold sending- and receiving-instru- 
ments. By means of a Morse telegraph-key in 
circuit with a spark-gap he flashed dots and 
dashes (short or long sparks) by varying the 
length of the strokes. He knew, however, that 
he had but made a beginning with these short- 
distance messages. Others had accomplished 
as much. Would he be able to go beyond scien- 
tific experiment and follow up discovery with a 
practical invention? 

When Marconi was twenty-one he had suc- 
ceeded in sending signals over a distance of a 
mile. Noticing one day that an instrument on 
the opposite side of a hill was affected, he knew 

401 



CONQUESTS OF mVElt^TIOK 

that the waves had penetrated the solid rock. 
''Surely, then/' he said to himself, ''there is no 
limit to the distance over which wireless mes- 
sages may be sent. But in order to make the 
waves work over greater distances I must have 
a more sensitive receiver. '^ Many painstaking 
experiments followed to produce the best 
coherer or instrument for detecting the faintest 
electrical currents. Then at last a satisfactory 
receiver was made with a sensitive coherer to 
catch the electric waves, and a decoherer to 
produce the sounds corresponding to dots and 
dashes with the making and breaking of the cur- 
rent. The receiver had, moreover, to be so 
tuned or harmonized with the s ending-instru- 
ment as to register the electric waves from that 
particular transmitter. 

In 1896 Marconi decided that the time had 
come to make his invention known to the world. 
He applied for a patent in England, at the same 
time submitting his plans to the postal-tele- 
graph authorities. From the London post-office 
he signaled to a station on the roof a hundred 
yards away. The next year he set up a mast a 
hundred and twenty feet high on the Isle of 

402 



GUGLIELMO MAKCONI 

Wight from which he sent experimental signals 
to a steamer with a sixty-foot mast for the re- 
ceiving-instrument. He had discovered that the 
height of stations increased their range. It oc- 
curred to him that greater height might be se- 
cured through the use of kites or balloons, but 
he soon decided that these would not prove 
practicable under all conditions and in all 
weathers. 

*^As the length of a receiving-pole is limited," 
he then said, ' ^ I must increase the range by in- 
creasing the electrical power at the sending- 
station. ' ' 

Now we hear at long-distance stations a crack 
as of thunder when the electric current bridges 
the spark-gap of the transmitter and the flame 
that accompanies the crack is as large as a 
man's wrist. 

On November 25, 1901, Marconi left England 
for Newfoundland. To the questions of report- 
ers who clamored for a marvel that would be 
good for a column at least, he said he hoped to 
show that the time had come when one might 
send signals to boats three hundred miles away. 
He felt sure, however, that he had everything 

403 



CONQUESTS OF Il^VENTION 

in readiness for sending the wonder-waves 
across the ocean from England to America. But 
he was determined to wait for the accomplished 
fact to announce itself without heralding. 

At Poldhu, on the coast of Cornwall, Eng- 
land, a station was established with a group of 
twenty tall poles strung with wires from pole to 
pole. Huge power-driven dynamos furnished 
the electric current and converters replaced the 
induction-coils of the early experiments. At 
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, another station with 
powerful machinery for generating electricity 
had also been built. Storms had done great 
damage to the masts at both points ; but Mar- 
coni, unwilling to wait for them to be fully 
restored, determined on a trial from Signal Hill 
near St. Johns, Newfoundland, which was some 
six hundred miles nearer Poldhu than the Cape 
Cod station. 

Thursday, December 12, 1901, was the great 
day when the first wireless message crossed the 
ocean. *'At three o'clock in the afternoon, on 
December ninth, begin sending me a simple sig- 
nal. Let it be the three dots of the S. Keep 
sending it at intervals until six o'clock,'' had 

404 



GUGLIELMO MAECONI 

been the directions given to the home station. 

Between those hours (11 :30 a. m. to 2 :30 p. M. 
by Newfoundland time) Marconi was at his post 
on Signal Hill, waiting. The wire, carried aloft 
by a great kite (for the building of a special 
aerial for the test was of course too costly) 
passed through the window of one of the govern- 
ment buildings, to where Marconi sat with a 
telephone receiver held to his ear. At last (it 
was a half -hour after noon on December 12th, 
that being four o'clock in England) he heard 
very faintly three short ticks. Listening 
breathlessly until there came again the three 
magic strokes, he called to his assistant to learn 
if his ears, too, could catch the sound brought by 
the ether waves, two thousand miles across the 
Atlantic. Again and again now came the three 
clicks — faint still, but fraught with wonderful 
promise. Man had learned to use the wings of 
light and lightning, spanning time and space 
with his thought. 

Of course there was no powerful sending-ap- 
paratus in Newfoundland to flash back to Corn- 
wall the news of the great victory. That had to 
be sent by cable. 

405 



COE^QUESTS OF mVENTION 

Each conquest of invention is a triumphal 
arch through which man looks to an untraveled 
world of new achievement. So when Marconi 
saw his signaling without wires filling a great 
need in the sending of messages from ship to 
ship or ship to shore, across oceans and through 
the uncharted sea of the sky, he turned his 
thought to the problem of the wireless tele- 
phone. But here America took up the work, and 
while Marconi and other great scientists were 
struggling wth the tremendous difficulties of the 
task, the group of telephone scientists known 
as the Bell Engineers, under the leadership of 
John J. Carty, working with all the advantages 
of perfect team-work of trained hands and 
brains, reinforced by ideal equipment, together 
won the goal. On September 29, 1915, the voice 
of a man speaking into his desk telephone in 
New York was taken up by the sending appara- 
tus of the navy wireless station at Arlington, 
Virginia, and flashed on the wings of the ether 
waves through space. Some of these waves 
were caught at the station of Mare Island, Cali- 
fornia, and by means of the amplifier which is to 
the wireless telephone what the coherer is to 

406 



GUGLIELMO MAECONI 

Marconi's apparatus, the words were made dis- 
tinctly audible to Mr. Carty, who sat with the 
telephone receiver at his ear, listening to his 
friend in New York. 

^*It is not, however,'' explained Mr. Carty, 
in an address before the Franklin Institute of 
Philadelphia, in May, 1916, *Hhe function of the 
wireless telephone to do away with the use of 
wires, but rather to be employed in situations 
where wires are not available, as between ship 
and ship and across large bodies of water. The 
ether is a universal conductor for wireless tele- 
phone and telegraph impulses and must be used 
in common by all who wish to employ those 
agencies of communication. In the case of the 
wireless telegraph the number of messages 
which may be sent simultaneously is much re- 
stricted. In the case of the wireless telephone, 
owing to the thousands of separate wave-lengths 
required for the transmission of speech, the 
number of telephone conversations which may 
be carried on at the same time is stiU further 
restricted, and is so small that all who can em- 
ploy wires will find it necessary to do so, leav- 
ing the ether available for those who have no 

407 



COISrQUESTS OF IXVElNrTIOlsr 

otiier means of comimiiiicatioiL This quality 
of tile etiier wMch ttms restricts its use is really 
a characteristic of the greatest valne to man- 
Mud, for it forms a xmiversal party line, so to 
speak, connecting together all creation, so that 
anybody, anywhere, who connects with it in the 
proper manner, may be heard by every one else 
so connected. Thns, a sinking ship or a hnman 
being anywhere can send forth a cry for help 
which may be heard and answered/' 



40S 



INDEX 



Adams, John Quincy, 361 
Air Brake, 284-289 
illustration, 287 
Allston, Washington, 353, 355 
Andre, Major, 223 
Arkwright, Eichard, 33, 49-53 
Automobile, 310-324 



'' Barber Who Became a 

Knight," 49-53 
Barlow, Joel, 233, 234, 239 
Bell, Alexander Graham, 379- 

395, 328 
Bessemer, Henry, 303, 305 
Bessemer Process, 295, 296 
' ' Black diamonds, ' '' 136 
Blast Furnace, 293, 294 
Bleriot, Louis, 341 
Block System (of safety sig- 
nals), 289 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 231, 

234, 237 
Boulton, Matthew, 143, 146, 

153, 157, 209, 212 
Boulton and Watt Engines, 

249 
''Burning of Moscow," 233 
''By-Products," 80-82 



Canals, 208, 229, 231 
Caoutchouc, 107 
Carding, 32, 39-40 
Carnegie, Andrew, (quoted), 

144, 192, 198, 220 
Carron Iron Works, 205 
Cartwright, Edmund, 54-63, 

230 
Carty, John J., 406-408 
Casson, Herbert N. (quoted), 

302 
"Centennial Exposition," 390, 

392 
Charcoal, 206 
"Charlotte Dundas," 219 
Chicago, 24-25 
"Child Labor," 35 
Civil War, 

and cotton, 36 
Westinghouse, 279 
Civilization, development of, 

3-6, 137-138 
effect of transportation, 

189-190 
effect of artificial light, 

137-138 
Clay, Henry, 358 
"Clermont," 238, 239-241 
Clinton, DeWitt, 358 
Coal, 136, 206 
"Combing," 39-40 



409 



INDEX 



' ' Conquest of the Eeaper, ' ' 8- 

26 
Conquests of Invention, 3-7 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 362 
Cotton, 

carding, 32, 39-40 
by-products of, 80-82 
''Cotton is king," 29-37 
loom, 

hand, 31-32 
power, 34, 57, 58, 60 
fly-shuttle, 33, 43-44 
spinning, 32 

spinning- jenny, 32, 38-48, 
50, 52 
Cotton Gin, 63-79 
' ' Cotton as a World Power, ' ' 

81-82 
Crabbe, George, (quoted), 62 
Cradle, 8, 15, 16 
Crompton, Samuel, 34 
Curfew, 137 

D 

Davy, Sir Humphrey, 154 
"Day of Rubber," 107-109 
Detroit, iron works, 314-316 
Duryea, Charles E., 321 
Dyer and Martin, Life of Edi- 
son, (quoted), 178, 185 

E 
Edison, Thomas Alva, 158- 
185, 399 
(quoted), 217, 322 
Electricity, definition of, 167 
Ellsworth, Miss, 376 
Erie Canal, 229 



'Tinder of Buried Treas- 
ure," 139-157 
Fire, 135, 137 
Fisher, George, 94, 96, 97 



Fitch, John, 219 
Fly-shuttle, 33, 43-44 
Ford, Henry, 310-324 
Fort Myer, 341 
"Franklin of the Nineteenth 

Century," 158-185 
Franklin, Benjamin, 225-227, 

350 
Frog, steel reversible, 283 
Fulton, Robert, 61, 212, 219- 

221, 222-241, 206 



G 



Gale, Professor, 372, 375 
Gas Lighting, 140, 150-156 
Gin, cotton, 63-79 
Glasgow University, 197 
Goodyear, 

Amasa, 111, 112 

Charles, 106, 110-131 

Stephen, 113 

William, 131 
Greene, Mrs. Nathanael, 69-75 
Guilds, 

Guild of Hammermen, 197, 
203 

Guilds of Middle Ages, 295 



Hargreaves, James, 33, 38-48, 

49, 242 
Helicopter, 331 
Henry, Joseph, 365, 375, 388, 

391, 399 
' ' Hercules, ' ' statue by Morse, 

355 
Hertz, Professor, 398-401 
Home Industries, 8, 12, 38- 

42, 85 
Home, Inventions in the, 83-86 
Howe, Elias, 87-103, 217, 218, 

242 



410 



INDEX 



Hubbard, Gardiner G., 385, 

390 
Hubbard, Mabel, 385 



Industrial Eevolution, 14, 15, 

29-31 
Inventions in the home, 83-86 
Iron, 206 

K 

Kay, John, 33, 43-45, 242 
Kelly, William, 298-309 
Kelvin, Lord, 391 
Kitty Hawk, 335, 337 
''Knight Errant of Inven- 
tion,'' 110-131 



Lafayette, 358 

Langley, Samuel P., 325-329, 

335 
Latent heat, 201 
Light, 133-138 

are, 169 

bamboo filament, 173 

gas, 140, 150-156 

incandescent, 169-173 
Lilienthal, Otto, 332, 335, 337 
Livingston, Eobert R., 234- 

235, 238 
Locomotive, 

first model, 141, 146, 150, 
243-274 

illustration, 147 
Loom, 

hand, 31-32 

power, 34, 57, 58, 60 

M 

McCormick, 

Cyrus, 8-26, 217, 218, 242 



McGowan, Frank, 175 

Mackintosh, 107 

Marconi, Guglielmo, 396-408 

Match, 135 

Miller, Phineas, 76 

Monroe, James, 358 

Morse, 

Elizabeth Ann Breese, 350 

Jedediah, 354 

Samuel Finley Breese, 350- 
378, 388, 399 
Morse Code, 166, 349, 364, 373 
Moving Pictures, 182-183 
''Mule," 34 

Murdock, William, 139-157, 
206, 211, 242, 254 

N 

Nail making, 64-65 
Newcomen Engine, 200, 205 

O 

"Old Field School, ' ' 16 
Open-Hearth Method, 295 



"Paul Pry,'' 164 

Phenol, making of, 185 

Phonograph, 169, 182 

' ' Pioneers of Invention, ' ' 

215-221 
' ' Poet of Many Inventions, ' ' 

54-63 
Postal facilities in 1789, 228 
Primitive man, 4-6 
Prometheus, 135 



Eeaper, 18-23 

Ricalton, J. R., 176-178 



411 



INDEX 



Eighi, Professor, 398, 400 
''Eocket,'' 267, 269, 271 
Botary Engine, 

Watt, 211 

Westinghouse, 277, 281 
Rubber, 107-109, 110-131 

vulcanization of, 126, 129, 
131 
''Rue des Panarames," 233 



S 



Sclierer, Dr., (quoted), 81-82 
Scott, Sir Walter, (quoted), 

154 
Sewing Machine, 87-103 

lock stitch, 92, 93, 218 
Sickle, 9 
Signals, 345-349 

Indian, 347 
Singer, Isaac Morton, 100-101, 

218 
Smithsonian Institution, 327, 

329 
Spinning, 32 
Spinning-jenny, 33, 38-48, 50, 

52 
Spring, L. W., (quoted), 306- 

307 
Starr, J. W., 170 
Steam, 191-213 
Steam Engine, 191-213, 218, 

293 
Steam Hammer, 295, 308 
''Steel Age," 291-297 
Steel, Bessemer, 207, 298-309 
Steel Converter, 296, 306-307 
Stephenson, 

George, 190, 219, 243-274, 

311 
Robert, 252, 260 
Submaj-ine Detector, 184 
Submarine Torpedo, 231-233, 

237 



Telegraph, 350-378 

musical, 382, 386 

principles of, 367-378 

wireless, 396-408 
Telephone, 169, 379-395 

wireless, 406-408 
Thomson, Sir William, 391 
Tractor, 6, 26, 321, 322 
Transportation, 

Boulton and Watt engines, 
249 

"Charlotte Dundas,'' 219 

"Clermont," 220 

First wheel, 189 

Locomotive, 219, 243-274 

"Rocket," 267-269, 271 

Steam engine, 218 

Steamboat, 61, 219-221, 206 
' ' Transportation and Prog- 
ress," 189-190 
Trevithick Engine, 254, 255, 

256 
Tyndall, Professor, 171 



Vail, Alfred, 372-375 / 

"Vegetable wool," 70 
"Visible Speech," 379, 381 

383, 384, 385, 391 
Vote recording machine, 168 
Vulcanization of rubber, 126, 

129, 131 

W 

Washington's Time, 136 
Waste, elimination of, 80-82, 

201-202 
"Water frame," 34, 51 
Watt, James, 143, 144, 145, 

146, 149, 153, 156, 191- 

213, 218 



412 



INDEX 

Webster, Daniel, '* Wizard of 

speech defending Goodyear, 158 

118 Wright, 

''Weeping wood," 107 Bishop Milton, 331 

West, Benjamin, 224, 225, Orville, 330-343 

227, 228, 355-356 Wilbur, 330-343 
Westinghouse, George, 275-289 

**What hath God wrought," Y 

376 

Whitney, Eli, 34, 63-79, 242, Yale, student life in 1807, 

310 352-353 

Wireless Telegraphy, 396-408 ** Yankee who crowned King 

Wireless Telephony, 406-408 Cotton, ' ' 63-79 



413 



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